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Written in Folk Roots issue 134/135, 1994

VALKEAPÄÄ, BÆR, PAAKKUNAINEN, KOTILAINEN
Dálveleaikkat - Wintergames
DAT DATCD-17

There aren't many Sámi, but they're making a strong and influential statement in music and visual art these days, and one who has over a long series of recordings been showing the way in terms of taking advantage of the possibilities of the CD - very long tracks, extremely quiet sections, and also its potential for making a visual statement - is Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. His works, usually in collaboration with Finnish musicians Seppo Paakkunainen and Esa Kotilainen, have represented an exploration of the North Pole of minimalism in terms not only of their music but also of his graphic and photographic work, which carries over from his books of art and poetry into the CD packaging.
      Valkeapää isn't the most vocally adventurous male joiker - I'd recommend a listen to, for example, Wimme Saari for that - and his live performances are usually quiet and unassuming, from what I've seen of them, but they do leave one with a sense of possibilities, wilderness still to be explored, that here is a whole other way of approaching music. He has played a significant part in creating the cultural environment and respect which gives the new Sámi art and music its power-base, and he's still exploring.
      This new album, where vocals are alternated with Johan Anders Bær, and which includes the joik which Valkeapää performed at the start of the remarkably beautiful opening of the Winter Olympics, seems to me to be probably the most satisfying yet. Tracks are generally shorter than on previous albums, but they're still strangers to the world of the 3-minute hit. This music deals in slow change, almost glacial time-spans, and the length of a CD does allow time to stop and ponder, as one does while spending time with nature, allowing the subtleties to seep in, becoming fascinated by the previously ignored - but can a recording, the same each time it's played, provide the same hidden depths?
      Paakkunainen and Kotilainen seem to have at last arrived at ways of accompanying which merge with the joiks and don't keep triggering jazz or classical associations. Here percussion textures (dominant rhythms only when the joik implies) with interweaving and interjections mainly of sax and synths provide an open landscape, and even when instruments occasionally emerge from their main role as a sort of activated silence they echo the joiks' melodic forms without appearing to crave centre stage. Valkeapää's previous album Goase Dusse, The Bird Symphony, may well have given some pointers; that's all it featured - birds recorded in Sámiland - no singing, no instruments.
      Like the Sámi population, this music is sparse yet remarkable and resilient, and perhaps it has something which the main body of European musics moved away from as they became preoccupied with the enticements of polyphony.


© 1994 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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