Traditional Sami music revolves around singing rather than instruments. In fact, you probably will not find any purely instrumental pieces in true Sami music. It is the voice that is the most important. Although the joik (yoik) originally referred to several types of traditional Sami singing, today it refers to all types Sami singing. The sound of a joik compares to traditional Native American chanting, with the emphasis on the voice, rather than instruments. Joiks usually has either no lyrics or very few at all. They are meant to represent a person or a place, but not literally. Rather, the ”yoiker” attempts to transfer the essence of the chosen person to the song. So the song is not about the person, but is supposed to reflect his-her essence, or the essence of a place. This concept is difficult for me to understand, but is essential to understanding joiks.
As I mentioned before, a joik is typically sung a cappella, but especially modern Sami joiks sometimes use a drum (en tromme) or other instrument, such as an accordion (et trekkspill) or fiddle (en fele) . While the tonality of a joik is at the disgression of the yoiker, usually it is pentatonic, which means that it uses a musical scale with five pitches per octave, rather than seven, which is what the heptatonic, or major scale, uses. Joiks do not rhyme and follow no sort of structure. The song is totally up to the yoiker.
Today, with the influence of the radio, pop culture, and declining practice of Sami traditional religion, joiking has declined dramatically. Nevertheless, there are still very famous yoikers that deserve to be mentioned. The most famous Sami yoiker is Mari Boine (Norway) who sings a kind of folk-rock with Sami joik roots. I heard her once in concert and she was absolutely fabulous. I felt like I was almost in my own little dream world. I must have been close to feeling the ”essence” of the person or place she was concentrating on.
Other well-known Sami artists include Wimme Sari and Nils Aslak-Valkeapää (Finland-he performed at the opening ceremony of the 1994 olympics in Lillehammer, Norge). The Finnish folk-metal group, Shaman, incorporated Sami joiking into their music, producing the first heavy metal music with Sami characteristics.
It might sound a little weird at first, but Sami music is very interesting and extremely relaxing. I guess you can kind of make of it what you want.
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Comments:
Ingebjørg:
I thought you’d like to know that the Sámi term for “en tromme” = “okta trumbu”, “trekkspill” = “geasanas”, and “fele” = “fijuvla” 🙂
Ernest:
There is a definite structure to the vast majority of yoik, though this may be modified to an extent by the performer. It is circular, there being a melody – series of melodic fragments – that repeats continuously.
One reason that yoik may be considered circular rather than repetitive is that the breath is put in various places – according to when air runs out and one of the smaller melodic phrases is over – and thus the illusion of a continuous melody is given.
And yoiks are not all relaxing, some may even be dark and violent (i.e. the wolf yoik); yoiks can capture everything known by us. Since they are most often used to capture and celebrate this essence of things, however, they are more upbeat.
Also, yoiking is very much alive in much of Sápmi. =)