Wake up to the sounds of the Sami

When is a yoik not a yoik? According to 23-year-old Sami singer Sara Marielle Gaup, a yoik is not a yoik, when it's a song, and yoiking is a type of singing associated with the nomadic Sami tribes who inhabit parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. Are you confused? Well read on...

Marie Boine is one of the most well-known yoik singers; she added jazz and rock elements to the ancient Sami art from the late Eighties. But new group Adjágas are quite a different prospect, in part to do with the deft strokes of minimalist jazz and electronic producer Pa Andreas Mjøs, and also because of Gaup and her musical partner Lawra Somby's dedication to preserving the purity of this much maligned art.

A Yoik is a traditional form of Sami singing, and Yoiking is the act of performing a Yoik. It's similar in style to some traditional chanting performed by American Indians. Yoiks are often personal songs reflecting a place or person, especially in Northern Sami areas. A yoik is often performed a capella or on occasions with a drum, as was often the case in ancient times, as Gaup points out.

Both Gaup and Somby have been yoiking since childhood. They met at a youth meeting when Somby was 18 and Gaup 15. Unlike Gaup, Somby has lived most of his life in cities, having been born and raised in Oslo. "My mother and father lived very different lives," he says in gentle, slightly accented English. "They both grew up in villages. My father's village is Sirma in Finnmark, and my mother grew up in Maajejavrie."

Somby was inspired to start yoiking by his father. "He said that he couldn't understand why the young ones didn't want to learn how to yoik, when there were so many beautiful yoiks. So I took up the challenge." This involved surreptitiously learning a Sea Sami yoik for three months until he had the courage to perform onstage. "After that I began singing traditional yoiks - person yoiks, from people who lived around the area of Tama in Finnmark. I was singing yoiks of people I'd never met, but what was good was that the lyrics contained all the dilemmas of these people's lives."

Adjágas is the Sami word for the mental state between waking and sleeping, and Somby explains that they got the name from an old Sami tale about how Samis learnt to yoik. "One day a man was sleeping in a tent and he half woke up and heard one of the Ulda people (the people that live underground) sitting outside on a rock yoiking. He learnt the yoiks while he was in a state of adjágas, and remembered it when he woke."

Gaup believes that it's vitally important that Adjágas continue promoting the culture of the Sami people, "Here in Kautokeino it didn't disappear, but in the area where my mother is from they stopped yoiking some time ago. Even here it's a balance between when you can yoik and when you can't. You never yoik on Sundays and you never yoik in church."

The reason for this extreme reaction dates back to the onset of a particularly zealous form of Christianity that swept through Northern Europe in the mid 1800's. "There was this religious movement in 1850 up in the North of Sweden called the Laestadianism," says Somby. "The white people had started to trade liquor with the Samis for their hides and other goods, so a lot of people became alcoholics. As a reaction to this Laestadianism took hold. There was a particularly zealous preacher who preached really hard against drunkenness, and also yoiking - because it's a really fun thing to do when you're drunk. So he banned that too."

The religious movement caught hold amongst the Samis, and yoiking became a sin. "It was only the outcastes of society that kept it alive, so it went underground. My parent's didn't care about the religious thing. They were quite liberal, so in our family it's remained unbroken."

Both Somby and Gaup have written songs on the new album. Subjects include walking barefoot in the grass ("Likholas" or "Happiness"), breaking conventions and not caring what other people say ("Dolgematki"), and three days in April where Samis are able to predict the weather ("Suvvi Ijat").

It seems that yoiking is becoming popular again with the Sami youth. Nowadays yoiking can be found incorporated into Sami rock, rap, pop, jazz, and even techno. It just goes to show that trying to ban or suppress a person's culture is never the answer.

Adjágas' 'Adjágas' is out now on Ever Records

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