Voice from another world (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Voice from another world

(Filed: 08/12/2005)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/12/08/bmboine08.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/12/08/ixartleft.html

Mari Boine's singing evokes images of ice floes and reindeer trails. She
talks to Jane Cornwell

In a recording studio on the outskirts of Oslo, Mari Boine sits forward
on her chair and listens, head tilted, to her freshly recorded voice.

[photo inset - Northern light: Mari Boine]

Tremulous, ethereal and powerfully intimate, it swoops and wheels over a
sonic landscape, carrying images of ice floes and reindeer trails, of
snowbirds flying over the Arctic tundra.

"Pretty good, huh?" she declares when the track ends, pleased with
herself and the afternoon's collaborators - a young rap duo from
Senegal and a Sioux Indian elder and spoken-word poet - who grin and
nod their agreement. Scandinavia's premier Sami singer has, it seems,
ensured the success of yet another project.

This venture, an "indigenous soul" CD entitled One People, is,
typically, just one among several she has on the go simultaneously.
Last week the diminutive Boine, 49, sang backing vocals for a Sami
storyteller-cum-historian from Oslo University. This week, she was the
subject of a documentary shown on Norway's NRK television network,
which has shortlisted her for their Greatest Norwegian of the Century
competition (alongside King Olav V and the explorer Thor Heyerdahl ).

She also is doing the soundtrack for a German film adaptation of Hansel
and Gretel and - with her long-time electro-acoustic band - finishing
her seventh album, Iddjagiedas ("In the Hand of the Night"), due out in
March on Universal. Oh, and tonight Boine is in London for "Norwegian
Voices", a concert intended to celebrate both the 100th anniversary of
Norway's independence and the country's wealth of musical activity.

Boine is the only Sami performer in an extensive line-up that also
features jazz pianist Ketil Bjørnstad, electronica outfit Supersilent
and guitarist/composer Terje Rypdal - with whom she is duetting.
"Norwegians should have woken up to the fact there are many, many Sami
artists," she says with a sigh. "But I'm still the only one they seem
to know."

A chain of events has kept Boine in her country's mind: challenging its
former prime minister to apologise to the Sami people on behalf of the
Norwegian state; refusing to perform at the opening of the 1994 Winter
Olympics in Lillehammer ("I wasn't going to be some exotic
decoration"); singing at the royal wedding of Norway's Princess Martha
Louise in 2002 ("that was different"); beating the likes of Sigur Rós
to win the 2003 Nordic Music Prize - and buying a new riverboat with
the prize money.

Although based in Oslo, where her flat overlooks a park and the
Akerselva river, the mother of two adult sons still calls Samiland
home. Up there, in the region formerly known as Lapland, which runs
across the northernmost reaches of Scandinavia, her indigenous
ancestors once lived in harmony with the elements. They slept in
open-topped tents on reindeer skins, believed in goddesses and shamans,
beat sacred drums, and sang traditional chants called joiks.

'Then the Christian missionaries came. They told us our religion was
from the devil. They banned our language, our songs." Boine's eyes
flash. "We were made to feel ashamed of being Sami. So we started
speaking Norwegian and singing Christian psalms."

Boine grew up, painfully shy, in a Sami village. Her parents were pious,
fearful, strict: "Dancing and singing with friends was out of the
question. Girls were to be neither seen nor heard." It was only when
she enrolled at a teacher-training college in the
singer-songwriter-friendly '70s that she thought about becoming an
artist.

"I suddenly understood this brainwashing, this colonial suppression,"
she says. "Why, like among Native Americans, there is alcoholism and
suicide. I became so furious that I forgot I was shy." She taught
herself guitar, started writing songs. "It was like a wise old woman
was whispering in my ear, urging me on," Boine grins. "Performing
became my medicine."

For a while she sang (Sami-language) protest songs to her own
accompaniment. Then she began experimenting, blending the trancy,
pentatonic joik form with jazz, world and rock elements, and later
electronica. Her first international release, 1989's Gula Gula
("Listen, Listen"), made her a sort of unofficial Sami ambassador. Her
third, 1993's Eagle Brother, won her a Norwegian Grammy. "The only time
my father heard my music was when he saw me on the television," she
says. "Two days later, he died of a heart attack."

Boine collaborated with legendary jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek,
released an album of dance remixes, and became a heroine for
eco-warriors, indigenous activists and the New Age movement. She helped
give the Sami back their pride.

"Things are better," she now says. "There is room for Sami culture and
language in schools. But we still have a long way to go." She returns
as often as she can to her house in her childhood village, from where -
depending on the season - she goes fishing or berry-picking, or watches
the Northern Lights whorl.

Samiland offers challenges as well as inspiration. "The only way forward
is to use the wisdom from the old world and find a meeting point with
the modern. And that's what I'm trying to do with my music," she says,
before putting on her coat and heading downtown, to watch the
Senegalese rappers.

'Norwegian Voices' is at the Barbican, London EC2, at 7.30pm tonight.
Tickets 020 7638 8891