| Ánde Somby — Yoiking With The Winged Ones (January 29, 2016) |
Ánde Somby — Yoiking With The Winged Ones (Jan. 29, 2016)
• Yoiking with the Winged Ones is a vinyl record with yoiks yoiked by Ánde Somby and recorded and mixed by Chris Watson.
• if a part of these heights
• becomes water
• the air breathes
• in the north
• (Nils–Aslak Valkeapää)
Location: Kvalnes, Norway
Album release: January 29, 2016
Record Label: Ash International/Touch, 2016
Duration: 37:18
Tracks:
A1. Gufihttar (underworld fairie) [feat. Chris Watson] 5:07
A2. Gadni (spirit of the mountain) [feat. Chris Watson] 3:56
A3. Neahkkameahttun (from the other side) [feat. Chris Watson] 10:32
B. Wolf (feat. Chris Watson) 17:43
© 2016 ASH INTERNATIONAL
• Vinyl LP + Download + bonus track, “Čuoika”. All downloads are 24 bit recordings by Chris Watson.
• Yoiking is the ancient chanting practise of the Sámi People — the indigenous peoples on the top of Europe. Yoiking originates from time immemorial — legend tells that it was the faires and elves of the arctic lands that gave yoiks to the Sámi People. Yoiking was an important element of the religious rituals in pre–christian times and has survived both christianity, imperialism and the fact that Sámi areas were confiscated by the states of the north; Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia.
• Ánde Somby is deeply rooted into the yoik tradition. He comes from the eastern part of the north Sámi areas and in the tundra tradition of the reindeer herders and from the valley tradition of arctic farmers. His yoiking is both quite technical as well as melodic — Somby is at the same time an innovative yoiker. All the three pieces on side A are his compositions. His signature as a yoiker is an expressive style performed on the borders of the human voice.
• The title of the work refers to the fact that the migratory birds that have made it to the arctic for their breeding season are an important part of the record. With the assistance of a local crow they break the arctic silence by singing and calling. The title also makes a more subtle reference to the sound flying from the echoing mountains.
• The project itself has three inspirations; the yoiks were given to the humans from the fairies and elves. This gives an emphasis on that yoiks are of the earth. The second inspiration is that there is a war against fairies and elves going on; in Norway that war was waged by the national poet Henrik Wergeland in the song Nisser og Dverge and has continued with stripping the earth of its soul and giving free license to aggressive exploitation. The emphasis is asking the fairies and elves if they still are doing good. The third inspiration is the European myth about Narcissus and Echo; Echo does not find her love as Narcissus rejects her, but she is given an eternal voice. Yoik and Echo meet in this work as echo yoiks along together with the underground energies.
• The recordings are made by Chris Watson, the world famous sound artist and leading field recorder. The recordings took place in Kvalnes, Lofoten mid June in 2014 in a moment while the arctic winds had a little rest. Chris Watson has also done the post production. A K Dolven took the photos for the project and has been instrumental in developing the concept. Thanks also to Tony Myatt.
Review:
Joseph Burnett
• In a stroke of genius, Yoiking with the Winged Ones captures a solo vocal performance by Norwegian Sámi artist Ande Somby not just outdoors, but with Chris Watson, formerly of industrial pioneers Cabaret Voltaire but now a leading figure in the realm of field recordings, doing the recordings and editing the final results. The ancient tradition of yoik, which the Sámi across the far north of Europe (Lapland, essentially) have been doing pretty much since time immemorial, is intrinsically linked to the land and nature. By formally uniting the two on this disc, both Somby and Watson give what may be the most authentic rendition of yoiking that people unfamiliar with the art form are likely to encounter. Short of shifting their butts and actually visiting the Sámi heartlands, that is, which is a good idea in itself.
• Ande Somby is apparently something of a rarity in modern yoik traditions in that, at least on Yoiking with the Winged Ones, he performs yoiks of his own composition. There are several narrative threads running through them. One is from the mythology of the Sámi, who supposedly learned about yoiking from elves and faeries before a war was declared on the fantastical beings (a metaphor for the plundering of the land by the Norwegian authorities). Another alludes to the Greek tale of Echo being spurned by Narcissus via a powerful echo that colors Somby’s own voice throughout the record (I like to think naturally as he yells into the wind, but it may be a trick of the production). This installs him as a voice of nature, with nature calling back to him via the residues of his own voice. Mother Earth is a strong presence across Yoiking with the Winged Ones, from the reference to birds in its title, to the “Wolf” of the lengthy fourth track, down to the very surroundings it was captured in.
• It is there that, surrounded by chirping birds, the rustle of grass and faint gusts of wind, Ande Somby launches his voice into the ether on all four tracks, pausing frequently as if to let the listener drink in the echo of his voice and the surrounding world he projects it into. Yoik is a singular form of singing, very austere and sparse, with lengthy pauses between lines and no musical accompaniment, which makes for a both challenging and fascinating experience. Somby’s voice will be an acquired taste for some, as it cracks and strains at certain points. Make no mistake, however, he is a master of his art, and whilst I could not understand a word of what he was singing, I was struck by the emotional potency on all four tracks, from bracing opener “Gufihttar (underworld fairie)” to the more intricate, echo–less, phrasings on “Wolf”, on which Somby seems to lead us into a mysterious, labyrinthine tale, the secrets of which are never revealed.
• Chris Watson does a masterful job in elevating Yoiking with the Winged Ones above the status of mere ethnographic curio into a work that bridges ancient tradition and modern music listening with aplomb. And Ande Somby is a charismatic, soulful performer with a gripping delivery. I can pretty much guarantee there won’t be another album this startling and steeped in history released in 2016.
• http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/
Review/Interview
≡ In recent years I haven’t kept up with all the releases of Sami music, and I confess I’m not that interested in some of the most recent fusion led work. However if one wants to experience something powerfully contemporary and at the same time routed firmly in the fabric of the Sami people, then Ánde Somby’s ‘Yoiking with the winged ones’ is worth hearing. Recorded in the field by Chris Watson, and also staged as a multi–channel installation, this is the sound of someone pushing themselves ever deeper into the moss and soil of their surroundings. Somby’s voice breaks, the yoik becomes fractured — exhaustion arrives and is submerged. Over the course of the 4 pieces we hear a voice stripped of its varnish, Somby’s particular approach of working up to and beyond the edges of his vocal abilities throwing itself out across the landscape. The recording captures, in Chris’s usual clarity, the landscape near to Kvalnes on the Lofotan peninsula, with Ánde’s voice echoing back and forth, rising above the bird song. One strand of my own work involves intuitive scores for musicians placed within the landscape as an equal element and a mark of the success of such pieces is when the hair on the back of the audiences necks rise up — that moment of intense listening, captivated by each second. A recording of such a piece that is capable of having the same effect by reproducing something of the location and the performer’s effect on it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to achieve. On ‘Yoiking with the winged ones’ Chris has done that. I have no doubt that it isn’t the same as standing there with the wind and Ánde’s voice coming at you from all angles, but it does capture more than mere documentation.
≡ I spoke to Chris and emailed with Ánde to discuss the recording of the album, yoik and Sami culture:
CW: well, I knew nothing about yoiking really until I got an invitation from Ánde to go up to where he was living at the time, a place called Kvalnes in Arctic Norway, off the west coast and some way inside the Arctic circle. Ánde is also a law professor at Tromso University, so literally an advocate for the Sami people. Ánde had, I think, some kind of grant and was given the challenge of further promoting Sami Culture and decided a good way to do this would be to make a record of his yoik in the landscape so invited me up there in 2014. At the time Ánde was living with his then partner A K Dolven, the prolific Norwegian artist (1) near Kvalnes, this tiny fishing community, I’d say less than fifty houses, wedged between huge mountains and the Arctic ocean, amazing place, amazing culture I dropped into. So I stayed with them for a few days and Ánde explained that his idea with yoiking was to go into the landscape, vocalise and make these sounds, and that the echo that came back wasn’t an echo or reverberation as we know it, but was in fact the spirit voices of his ancestors answering him, because the Sami believe that we come from and go back into the landscape. The spirits of the ancestors live inside the landscape and they respond to the yoik by echoing these sounds. Ánde was concerned about several things including that the Norwegian government had granted mining rights to a British company to look for deep coal seams within Sami reindeer herding country, which really upset him. So, he created a yoik so he could speak to his ancestors and say ‘look, there are still people up here who respect Sami culture and we know what’s happening to the landscape and what might happen. There are people who think of and respect the old ways’, which I thought was a very powerful message. So I had great empathy with the whole thing.
≡ Anna Katrine had found a lake which was about an hour’s walk up this very steep sided mountain, with no path, through heather, lichens and all sorts of Arctic flora. This astonishing lake was nestled in an elbow in the mountains, a few hundred metres across, very clear with Arctic char in it, rising and falling. Ánde would stand almost at one side, at a tangent across the lake and yoik and I would record his direct vocalisations from some distance; two or three hundred metres, but then I would get this incredible echo and reverberation coming back off the mountains which were all around us and it really filled the space. It amplified itself, almost like a standing wave. Ánde performed several yoik up there and it was quite an experience. For a start I had to walk up there, for about an hour up this very steep mountain, carrying all the gear. I kept stopping to get him to explain what he was doing, but also to get my breath back. I made a radio programme as well because I thought it was so fascinating. I used DPA’s (small personal mics) and just kept chatting to him and that’s the basis of a Radio 4 documentary about the trip. So, on the way I learnt a lot more about Sami culture, what he was doing and the reasons why. Ánde performed these pieces at the lake and then we came back down and went to another site where he performed his, quite well known now, wolf yoik.
≡ The Sami believe you can migrate their spirit from humans into animals so Ánde did this amazing thing where he slowly evolves from Sami to wolf and back to Sami during this seventeen minute yoik. A bit like the bushmen in the Kalahari, there’s a kind of shamanic sense that they can pass their spirit into animals and become animals, think, feel and behave like them.
≡ At the back of Anna Katrine’s house there’s a stretch of managed wilderness, not really a garden, which runs down to the shores of the ocean, where she has a boat and would go out each day, fishing for halibut and other fish for us to eat at night. But also there’s a lávut, a Sami reindeer herders’ tent, that we went in and again I learnt more about the culture as we sat around a traditional hearthstone, which was not only the centre of the heat but also of another aspect of Sami culture. Ánde told me about a goddess who sits in the fire with the hot coals on her lap, it was remarkable, and he performed some more yoik in there that I recorded, including a mosquito yoik. It was a massive cultural experience for me and I was fascinated by it.
JrF: Indeed. I know when I first started importing Sami recordings into the UK I knew very little about the cultural and political life of the Sami and there is a complex and interesting history. The relationship to the sound of their surroundings is of course of particular interest to us as we both spend a lot of time listening to environments. It’s one of the few vocal traditions on the European continent that has retained, fully, its connection to the environments it was created in and from.
CW: as far as I know, Ánde told me it’s the oldest vocal tradition in Europe. It’s interesting that you mention the political situation. Again I just didn’t know about that. Ánde is Sami — he’s a Norwegian citizen but he’s a Sami and that crosses all political boundaries. They don’t mean anything, particularly to a nomadic culture. This was all new to me, including how suppressed Sami culture has been by Norwegian society. It’s still illegal to yoik in Norwegian churches and Sami culture isn’t taught at schools, even in the far north.
JrF: Ánde, one of the things we’ve been discussing is how difficult it is to fully explain exactly what yoik is with the written word, especially in a language other than Sami. From your perspective could you tell us something about what the yoik means to the Sami people and to you personally?
AS: Yoik is basically a way to express oneself and mediate either a factual, poetical esoteric or magical message. The symbolic value of yoik is enormous. Yoik comes from time immemorial, and both the Roman empire, christianity and later different national states have had an ongoing war against yoik, but yoik is the definitive survivor. We used to say that you can burn my drum (when we reference when the shamanic drums were burned) but you can never ever burn the song that is inside me. Yoik is the stonehenge that is not made of stone.
JrF: Could you explain more about the origins of each of the yoik on the album?
AS: The wolf yoik is traditional. Me and the wolf have been on the road together ever since I started to perform some 40 years ago. The others are ‘máttuid cavgileamit’ — when our ancestors are giving us a little poke in the form of whispering us a yoik never yoiked before. ‘Gufihttar’ is a reminder and a praise to the underground people — fairies and elves (2) who gave us these strange wonderful songs in the first place. ‘Gádni’ is the ‘bridge’ or the energy between humans and the underground people. Neahkkameahttun is a praise and comfort to those who have lived physically and have stepped out.
JrF: Ánde is known for working with the edges of his vocal abilities and on this record, during the wolf yoik, you can hear that. As I’ve said elsewhere, and this goes back even to the earliest days of field recording, capturing any kind of performance recorded in the environment is tricky as it either serves as straight documentation or, on rare occasions, does convey something more experiential. Chris, I wondered how it felt to you, as a person — a listener rather than in your role as recordist, when he was pushing himself beyond his limits during the wolf yoik in particular?
CW: I think just experiencing these yoiks in the landscape was really quite moving for me. Several times I when I was recording them I took my headphones off and just listened because I could hardly believe it. First of all with the acoustic up on the lake and then with the wolf yoik. It was explained to me before we even started that this isn’t entertainment, it’s very purposeful. It was hard listening to it and I could see him as well though I was some distance away because I wanted to include, obviously, the landscape in the recordings as well. Although we went down into this soft sounding acoustic lower down the mountain, the microphone was perhaps 30 or 40 metres away from Ánde and I was a good 50 metres behind that, it was quite moving, physically, to see someone transformed. He did move from how I had known him an hour or so earlier to this half wolf like persona. All of the yoiks we could only do once — that was it. He did a short percussive whoop as a test for the echoes and for my benefit and then we were into it. The wolf yoik is seventeen minutes and once you start you’re in it for the duration. So it becomes quite a visceral experience. Physically and psychologically quite moving seeing someone put themselves through something like that.
JrF: Indeed. When I first started listening to yoik, and indeed when listening to any sound tradition from another culture than one’s own, inevitably there’s an element of hearing it as simply as music, and it’s only after delving deeper that you realise it often goes much deeper than that, that it’s not entertainment. Our own culture is largely based around the telling of stories, whether that be in song or spoken word, and music for dancing. Our distant sound traditions are mostly lost to us, as indeed they are in many countries. Hearing some yoik away from where or whom it was created for means one is only hearing one element of it.
≡ Ánde, I know you have performed your wolf yoik in various locations and I wanted to ask you how you feel the yoik itself is influenced by the place in which it is performed?
AS: The wolf always plays along with the different spaces where we meet. It is so inspiring to hear from the audience that they get something powerful by listening to the wolf.
JrF: Chris, another aspect I wanted to discuss with you is that we are both used to listening very closely to environments for long durations so we’re quite good, I think, at picking up on really subtle changes — and I wondered if you could talk about any shifts you perceived in the general soundscape between Ánde’s vocalisations?
CW: I’m certain that he created changes within those locations and you can hear them. On the way up he was talking about how sometimes the birds respond, and they certainly did during the recording. There was a carrion crow and a cuckoo and almost a kind of call and response. Even the Arctic char rising in this unnamed mountain lake seemed to have some sort of rhythm attached to Ánde’s yoik. Part of creating this yoik is moving the acoustic of the landscape and when that happens then the things that live within it respond. It didn’t happen when we were there but he said that several times, earlier in the season, when he’s been up there and there’s been snow there has been snow fall, slippage in response to his yoiks, which is why I was convinced it was a special place and why he took the effort to get us all up that mountainside. He believes it’s a powerful place and when I heard him yoik in that environment and heard the response I could hear exactly what he meant. It’s strange because not only is it outside our culture it’s almost outside our understanding.
JrF: Yes, and I think one of the issues in terms of the wider perception of vocal based traditions is that some tend to almost group them all together as mystical chant rituals, but with a very thin and simple definition of such things. One thing that struck me about yoik is that it is raw and visceral. It certainly isn’t meditation music for mass markets!
An obvious question for you Ánde, but what do you hope listeners unfamiliar with yoik will get from hearing the album, given that because of the label it’s released on and Chris’s involvement does mean that it will reach some audiences totally unfamiliar with Sami sound culture?
AS: I think people in our time need to enjoy their traditions — to look back. They need to be in this moment — to be present in the presence. And they need to think forward — to be ready for the future. I hope people will both enjoy their past, their present and their future, and I think such invitations have to come in remote forms, from remote places and from remote times. I do it with both old and new yoiks and in orchestration with the wind, local crows, migrating birds and this fantastic sound faerie Chris Watson.
≡ DAT, the Sami label and publishing house, is still active and in fact was cofounded by Ánde Somby. Let’s hope that at some point reissues of Valkeapää’s ‘Goasse Dusse’ and Bar’s ‘Mahkaravju’ are possible, helped by the interest of new audiences that Somby’s release via Touch can bring.
Jez riley French — January 2016
≡ (1) A K Dolven’s work, for those readers not already familiar with it, explores the relationships between people and the perception of their environment — again, in a powerful and direct way. I recommend the book ‘Please Return’ (Art / Books) as an introduction to her work thus far.
≡ (2) Readers should be aware creatures such as elves and faeries in Sami culture are quite different from other western ideas of them, which, until recently at least, have been somewhat sanitised through their depiction in children’s literature.
≡ Jez riley French is an artist and field recordist based in East Yorkshire. He has created pieces for Tate Modern and Tate Britain along with galleries and arts organisations around the world. He also lectures and tutors on field recording, including alongside Chris Watson on workshops in the UK and Iceland. As well as numerous releases on the engraved glass label, early 2016 will see a new release via Touch records. • http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/
Touch: https://touchshop.org//
___________________________•••••_____________________________
| Ánde Somby — Yoiking With The Winged Ones (January 29, 2016) |
• if a part of these heights
• becomes water
• the air breathes
• in the north
• (Nils–Aslak Valkeapää)
Location: Kvalnes, Norway
Album release: January 29, 2016
Record Label: Ash International/Touch, 2016
Duration: 37:18
Tracks:
A1. Gufihttar (underworld fairie) [feat. Chris Watson] 5:07
A2. Gadni (spirit of the mountain) [feat. Chris Watson] 3:56
A3. Neahkkameahttun (from the other side) [feat. Chris Watson] 10:32
B. Wolf (feat. Chris Watson) 17:43
© 2016 ASH INTERNATIONAL
• Vinyl LP + Download + bonus track, “Čuoika”. All downloads are 24 bit recordings by Chris Watson.
• Yoiking is the ancient chanting practise of the Sámi People — the indigenous peoples on the top of Europe. Yoiking originates from time immemorial — legend tells that it was the faires and elves of the arctic lands that gave yoiks to the Sámi People. Yoiking was an important element of the religious rituals in pre–christian times and has survived both christianity, imperialism and the fact that Sámi areas were confiscated by the states of the north; Norway, Finland, Sweden and Russia.
• Ánde Somby is deeply rooted into the yoik tradition. He comes from the eastern part of the north Sámi areas and in the tundra tradition of the reindeer herders and from the valley tradition of arctic farmers. His yoiking is both quite technical as well as melodic — Somby is at the same time an innovative yoiker. All the three pieces on side A are his compositions. His signature as a yoiker is an expressive style performed on the borders of the human voice.
• The title of the work refers to the fact that the migratory birds that have made it to the arctic for their breeding season are an important part of the record. With the assistance of a local crow they break the arctic silence by singing and calling. The title also makes a more subtle reference to the sound flying from the echoing mountains.
• The project itself has three inspirations; the yoiks were given to the humans from the fairies and elves. This gives an emphasis on that yoiks are of the earth. The second inspiration is that there is a war against fairies and elves going on; in Norway that war was waged by the national poet Henrik Wergeland in the song Nisser og Dverge and has continued with stripping the earth of its soul and giving free license to aggressive exploitation. The emphasis is asking the fairies and elves if they still are doing good. The third inspiration is the European myth about Narcissus and Echo; Echo does not find her love as Narcissus rejects her, but she is given an eternal voice. Yoik and Echo meet in this work as echo yoiks along together with the underground energies.
• The recordings are made by Chris Watson, the world famous sound artist and leading field recorder. The recordings took place in Kvalnes, Lofoten mid June in 2014 in a moment while the arctic winds had a little rest. Chris Watson has also done the post production. A K Dolven took the photos for the project and has been instrumental in developing the concept. Thanks also to Tony Myatt.
Review:
Joseph Burnett
• In a stroke of genius, Yoiking with the Winged Ones captures a solo vocal performance by Norwegian Sámi artist Ande Somby not just outdoors, but with Chris Watson, formerly of industrial pioneers Cabaret Voltaire but now a leading figure in the realm of field recordings, doing the recordings and editing the final results. The ancient tradition of yoik, which the Sámi across the far north of Europe (Lapland, essentially) have been doing pretty much since time immemorial, is intrinsically linked to the land and nature. By formally uniting the two on this disc, both Somby and Watson give what may be the most authentic rendition of yoiking that people unfamiliar with the art form are likely to encounter. Short of shifting their butts and actually visiting the Sámi heartlands, that is, which is a good idea in itself.
• Ande Somby is apparently something of a rarity in modern yoik traditions in that, at least on Yoiking with the Winged Ones, he performs yoiks of his own composition. There are several narrative threads running through them. One is from the mythology of the Sámi, who supposedly learned about yoiking from elves and faeries before a war was declared on the fantastical beings (a metaphor for the plundering of the land by the Norwegian authorities). Another alludes to the Greek tale of Echo being spurned by Narcissus via a powerful echo that colors Somby’s own voice throughout the record (I like to think naturally as he yells into the wind, but it may be a trick of the production). This installs him as a voice of nature, with nature calling back to him via the residues of his own voice. Mother Earth is a strong presence across Yoiking with the Winged Ones, from the reference to birds in its title, to the “Wolf” of the lengthy fourth track, down to the very surroundings it was captured in.
• It is there that, surrounded by chirping birds, the rustle of grass and faint gusts of wind, Ande Somby launches his voice into the ether on all four tracks, pausing frequently as if to let the listener drink in the echo of his voice and the surrounding world he projects it into. Yoik is a singular form of singing, very austere and sparse, with lengthy pauses between lines and no musical accompaniment, which makes for a both challenging and fascinating experience. Somby’s voice will be an acquired taste for some, as it cracks and strains at certain points. Make no mistake, however, he is a master of his art, and whilst I could not understand a word of what he was singing, I was struck by the emotional potency on all four tracks, from bracing opener “Gufihttar (underworld fairie)” to the more intricate, echo–less, phrasings on “Wolf”, on which Somby seems to lead us into a mysterious, labyrinthine tale, the secrets of which are never revealed.
• Chris Watson does a masterful job in elevating Yoiking with the Winged Ones above the status of mere ethnographic curio into a work that bridges ancient tradition and modern music listening with aplomb. And Ande Somby is a charismatic, soulful performer with a gripping delivery. I can pretty much guarantee there won’t be another album this startling and steeped in history released in 2016.
• http://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/
Review/Interview
≡ In recent years I haven’t kept up with all the releases of Sami music, and I confess I’m not that interested in some of the most recent fusion led work. However if one wants to experience something powerfully contemporary and at the same time routed firmly in the fabric of the Sami people, then Ánde Somby’s ‘Yoiking with the winged ones’ is worth hearing. Recorded in the field by Chris Watson, and also staged as a multi–channel installation, this is the sound of someone pushing themselves ever deeper into the moss and soil of their surroundings. Somby’s voice breaks, the yoik becomes fractured — exhaustion arrives and is submerged. Over the course of the 4 pieces we hear a voice stripped of its varnish, Somby’s particular approach of working up to and beyond the edges of his vocal abilities throwing itself out across the landscape. The recording captures, in Chris’s usual clarity, the landscape near to Kvalnes on the Lofotan peninsula, with Ánde’s voice echoing back and forth, rising above the bird song. One strand of my own work involves intuitive scores for musicians placed within the landscape as an equal element and a mark of the success of such pieces is when the hair on the back of the audiences necks rise up — that moment of intense listening, captivated by each second. A recording of such a piece that is capable of having the same effect by reproducing something of the location and the performer’s effect on it is, in my opinion, equally difficult to achieve. On ‘Yoiking with the winged ones’ Chris has done that. I have no doubt that it isn’t the same as standing there with the wind and Ánde’s voice coming at you from all angles, but it does capture more than mere documentation.
≡ I spoke to Chris and emailed with Ánde to discuss the recording of the album, yoik and Sami culture:
CW: well, I knew nothing about yoiking really until I got an invitation from Ánde to go up to where he was living at the time, a place called Kvalnes in Arctic Norway, off the west coast and some way inside the Arctic circle. Ánde is also a law professor at Tromso University, so literally an advocate for the Sami people. Ánde had, I think, some kind of grant and was given the challenge of further promoting Sami Culture and decided a good way to do this would be to make a record of his yoik in the landscape so invited me up there in 2014. At the time Ánde was living with his then partner A K Dolven, the prolific Norwegian artist (1) near Kvalnes, this tiny fishing community, I’d say less than fifty houses, wedged between huge mountains and the Arctic ocean, amazing place, amazing culture I dropped into. So I stayed with them for a few days and Ánde explained that his idea with yoiking was to go into the landscape, vocalise and make these sounds, and that the echo that came back wasn’t an echo or reverberation as we know it, but was in fact the spirit voices of his ancestors answering him, because the Sami believe that we come from and go back into the landscape. The spirits of the ancestors live inside the landscape and they respond to the yoik by echoing these sounds. Ánde was concerned about several things including that the Norwegian government had granted mining rights to a British company to look for deep coal seams within Sami reindeer herding country, which really upset him. So, he created a yoik so he could speak to his ancestors and say ‘look, there are still people up here who respect Sami culture and we know what’s happening to the landscape and what might happen. There are people who think of and respect the old ways’, which I thought was a very powerful message. So I had great empathy with the whole thing.
≡ Anna Katrine had found a lake which was about an hour’s walk up this very steep sided mountain, with no path, through heather, lichens and all sorts of Arctic flora. This astonishing lake was nestled in an elbow in the mountains, a few hundred metres across, very clear with Arctic char in it, rising and falling. Ánde would stand almost at one side, at a tangent across the lake and yoik and I would record his direct vocalisations from some distance; two or three hundred metres, but then I would get this incredible echo and reverberation coming back off the mountains which were all around us and it really filled the space. It amplified itself, almost like a standing wave. Ánde performed several yoik up there and it was quite an experience. For a start I had to walk up there, for about an hour up this very steep mountain, carrying all the gear. I kept stopping to get him to explain what he was doing, but also to get my breath back. I made a radio programme as well because I thought it was so fascinating. I used DPA’s (small personal mics) and just kept chatting to him and that’s the basis of a Radio 4 documentary about the trip. So, on the way I learnt a lot more about Sami culture, what he was doing and the reasons why. Ánde performed these pieces at the lake and then we came back down and went to another site where he performed his, quite well known now, wolf yoik.
≡ The Sami believe you can migrate their spirit from humans into animals so Ánde did this amazing thing where he slowly evolves from Sami to wolf and back to Sami during this seventeen minute yoik. A bit like the bushmen in the Kalahari, there’s a kind of shamanic sense that they can pass their spirit into animals and become animals, think, feel and behave like them.
≡ At the back of Anna Katrine’s house there’s a stretch of managed wilderness, not really a garden, which runs down to the shores of the ocean, where she has a boat and would go out each day, fishing for halibut and other fish for us to eat at night. But also there’s a lávut, a Sami reindeer herders’ tent, that we went in and again I learnt more about the culture as we sat around a traditional hearthstone, which was not only the centre of the heat but also of another aspect of Sami culture. Ánde told me about a goddess who sits in the fire with the hot coals on her lap, it was remarkable, and he performed some more yoik in there that I recorded, including a mosquito yoik. It was a massive cultural experience for me and I was fascinated by it.
JrF: Indeed. I know when I first started importing Sami recordings into the UK I knew very little about the cultural and political life of the Sami and there is a complex and interesting history. The relationship to the sound of their surroundings is of course of particular interest to us as we both spend a lot of time listening to environments. It’s one of the few vocal traditions on the European continent that has retained, fully, its connection to the environments it was created in and from.
CW: as far as I know, Ánde told me it’s the oldest vocal tradition in Europe. It’s interesting that you mention the political situation. Again I just didn’t know about that. Ánde is Sami — he’s a Norwegian citizen but he’s a Sami and that crosses all political boundaries. They don’t mean anything, particularly to a nomadic culture. This was all new to me, including how suppressed Sami culture has been by Norwegian society. It’s still illegal to yoik in Norwegian churches and Sami culture isn’t taught at schools, even in the far north.
JrF: Ánde, one of the things we’ve been discussing is how difficult it is to fully explain exactly what yoik is with the written word, especially in a language other than Sami. From your perspective could you tell us something about what the yoik means to the Sami people and to you personally?
AS: Yoik is basically a way to express oneself and mediate either a factual, poetical esoteric or magical message. The symbolic value of yoik is enormous. Yoik comes from time immemorial, and both the Roman empire, christianity and later different national states have had an ongoing war against yoik, but yoik is the definitive survivor. We used to say that you can burn my drum (when we reference when the shamanic drums were burned) but you can never ever burn the song that is inside me. Yoik is the stonehenge that is not made of stone.
JrF: Could you explain more about the origins of each of the yoik on the album?
AS: The wolf yoik is traditional. Me and the wolf have been on the road together ever since I started to perform some 40 years ago. The others are ‘máttuid cavgileamit’ — when our ancestors are giving us a little poke in the form of whispering us a yoik never yoiked before. ‘Gufihttar’ is a reminder and a praise to the underground people — fairies and elves (2) who gave us these strange wonderful songs in the first place. ‘Gádni’ is the ‘bridge’ or the energy between humans and the underground people. Neahkkameahttun is a praise and comfort to those who have lived physically and have stepped out.
JrF: Ánde is known for working with the edges of his vocal abilities and on this record, during the wolf yoik, you can hear that. As I’ve said elsewhere, and this goes back even to the earliest days of field recording, capturing any kind of performance recorded in the environment is tricky as it either serves as straight documentation or, on rare occasions, does convey something more experiential. Chris, I wondered how it felt to you, as a person — a listener rather than in your role as recordist, when he was pushing himself beyond his limits during the wolf yoik in particular?
CW: I think just experiencing these yoiks in the landscape was really quite moving for me. Several times I when I was recording them I took my headphones off and just listened because I could hardly believe it. First of all with the acoustic up on the lake and then with the wolf yoik. It was explained to me before we even started that this isn’t entertainment, it’s very purposeful. It was hard listening to it and I could see him as well though I was some distance away because I wanted to include, obviously, the landscape in the recordings as well. Although we went down into this soft sounding acoustic lower down the mountain, the microphone was perhaps 30 or 40 metres away from Ánde and I was a good 50 metres behind that, it was quite moving, physically, to see someone transformed. He did move from how I had known him an hour or so earlier to this half wolf like persona. All of the yoiks we could only do once — that was it. He did a short percussive whoop as a test for the echoes and for my benefit and then we were into it. The wolf yoik is seventeen minutes and once you start you’re in it for the duration. So it becomes quite a visceral experience. Physically and psychologically quite moving seeing someone put themselves through something like that.
JrF: Indeed. When I first started listening to yoik, and indeed when listening to any sound tradition from another culture than one’s own, inevitably there’s an element of hearing it as simply as music, and it’s only after delving deeper that you realise it often goes much deeper than that, that it’s not entertainment. Our own culture is largely based around the telling of stories, whether that be in song or spoken word, and music for dancing. Our distant sound traditions are mostly lost to us, as indeed they are in many countries. Hearing some yoik away from where or whom it was created for means one is only hearing one element of it.
≡ Ánde, I know you have performed your wolf yoik in various locations and I wanted to ask you how you feel the yoik itself is influenced by the place in which it is performed?
AS: The wolf always plays along with the different spaces where we meet. It is so inspiring to hear from the audience that they get something powerful by listening to the wolf.
JrF: Chris, another aspect I wanted to discuss with you is that we are both used to listening very closely to environments for long durations so we’re quite good, I think, at picking up on really subtle changes — and I wondered if you could talk about any shifts you perceived in the general soundscape between Ánde’s vocalisations?
CW: I’m certain that he created changes within those locations and you can hear them. On the way up he was talking about how sometimes the birds respond, and they certainly did during the recording. There was a carrion crow and a cuckoo and almost a kind of call and response. Even the Arctic char rising in this unnamed mountain lake seemed to have some sort of rhythm attached to Ánde’s yoik. Part of creating this yoik is moving the acoustic of the landscape and when that happens then the things that live within it respond. It didn’t happen when we were there but he said that several times, earlier in the season, when he’s been up there and there’s been snow there has been snow fall, slippage in response to his yoiks, which is why I was convinced it was a special place and why he took the effort to get us all up that mountainside. He believes it’s a powerful place and when I heard him yoik in that environment and heard the response I could hear exactly what he meant. It’s strange because not only is it outside our culture it’s almost outside our understanding.
JrF: Yes, and I think one of the issues in terms of the wider perception of vocal based traditions is that some tend to almost group them all together as mystical chant rituals, but with a very thin and simple definition of such things. One thing that struck me about yoik is that it is raw and visceral. It certainly isn’t meditation music for mass markets!
An obvious question for you Ánde, but what do you hope listeners unfamiliar with yoik will get from hearing the album, given that because of the label it’s released on and Chris’s involvement does mean that it will reach some audiences totally unfamiliar with Sami sound culture?
AS: I think people in our time need to enjoy their traditions — to look back. They need to be in this moment — to be present in the presence. And they need to think forward — to be ready for the future. I hope people will both enjoy their past, their present and their future, and I think such invitations have to come in remote forms, from remote places and from remote times. I do it with both old and new yoiks and in orchestration with the wind, local crows, migrating birds and this fantastic sound faerie Chris Watson.
≡ DAT, the Sami label and publishing house, is still active and in fact was cofounded by Ánde Somby. Let’s hope that at some point reissues of Valkeapää’s ‘Goasse Dusse’ and Bar’s ‘Mahkaravju’ are possible, helped by the interest of new audiences that Somby’s release via Touch can bring.
Jez riley French — January 2016
≡ (1) A K Dolven’s work, for those readers not already familiar with it, explores the relationships between people and the perception of their environment — again, in a powerful and direct way. I recommend the book ‘Please Return’ (Art / Books) as an introduction to her work thus far.
≡ (2) Readers should be aware creatures such as elves and faeries in Sami culture are quite different from other western ideas of them, which, until recently at least, have been somewhat sanitised through their depiction in children’s literature.
≡ Jez riley French is an artist and field recordist based in East Yorkshire. He has created pieces for Tate Modern and Tate Britain along with galleries and arts organisations around the world. He also lectures and tutors on field recording, including alongside Chris Watson on workshops in the UK and Iceland. As well as numerous releases on the engraved glass label, early 2016 will see a new release via Touch records. • http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/
Touch: https://touchshop.org//
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