July 21, 2006
Indigenous music rocks
northern Norway
Nunavik throat singers
join musicians from Brazilian rain forests at Saami celebration
JANE
GEORGE
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PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Albina
Degtyareva and Juliana Krivosjapkina of the group Ayarhaan produce spine-chilling
sounds from the “khomous,” the traditional mouth harp from Yakutia
in Siberia. Their music evokes the sounds of galloping horses, the wind blowing
across the tundra, birds, passion and love. About 410,00 Yakut people live in
Yakutia, now called the Sakha Republic, in north-eastern Siberia. (PHOTOS BY
JANE GEORGE)
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MANNDALEN, NORWAY —
The midnight sun, campfire smoke and sounds from around the world blended last
week at Riddu Riddu, Norway’s annual indigenous music and culture festival.
Riddu Riddu, or “storm
off the sea” in Saami, began as a strictly local event 15 years ago.
Since then, the festival
grew from a musical barbecue bash organized by Saami students to an international
event where Saami from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia mix with Inuit, Maori,
Ainu, the San, and other indigenous peoples.
During this year’s
five-day event, July 11 to 16, joik — the traditional Saami song and the
original mainstay of Riddu Riddu — was performed as rap, hard rock, or
with New Age, country or South American touches.
Riddu Riddu 2006’s
program showcased everything from “polar ska,” “Ainu dub,”
“tribal funk” to “ethno-futuristic rock” played by indigenous
groups from Norway, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Siberia, South Africa, Greenland
and Alaska.
This year’s Riddu
Riddu featured acts such as Pamyua, an award-winning Alaskan-Greenlandic band,
performing an impromptu throat-singing number with Nunavik’s Maaki Putulik
as the Saami crowd went wild.
The world beat of today’s
Riddu Riddu sat well with the festival crowd of up to 4,000 people, who say
they like change and a chance to hear new music.
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Karina
Møller of Pamyua sings a song about motherhood in her low, soulful voice.
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A favourite group was Adjágas,
made up of young Saami joikers. Its combination of traditional and modern is
a winner, said one young Saami.
Throat singers from Nunavut
and Nunavik, Taima, Edward Snowball, and Tanya Tagaq Gillis have all played
at Riddu Riddu. Spoken word performer Taqralik Partridge was on the 2006 program,
but cancelled at the last minute.
Every year, Riddu Riddu
features a guest indigenous people. In 2004, the Inuit of Nunavik was the festival’s
guest indigenous people.
This year the spotlight
was on the Nambiquara people from the Matto Grosso rain forest in Brazil. Nambiquara
means “people with ear piercing,” a name given to them 100 years ago
when they made first contact with Westerners.
Riddu Riddu’s focus
on international and indigenous issues inspired Norway and the Norwegian Saami
Parliament to give Riddu Riddu enough money — about $300,000 — to
present a music program that’s unique in the circumpolar region.
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Henrik
Olsen, the Riddu Riddu president, was one of the young Saami students who started
the annual musical bash 15 years ago. Riddu Riddu is now the circumpolar world’s
top indigenous music and culture festival.
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The money has helped improve
the festival site, which now has a large outdoor stage, several smaller traditional
Saami “lavvu” tipis, a sod house, Tibetan yurt tent, an “Indiville”
indigenous village and a brand-new Saami language and training centre for its
offices and film festival. Riddu Riddu also plans to launch a year-round indigenous
cultural centre.
Organizers say Riddu Riddu
tries to present only the best indigenous acts in the world, mixing the top
Saami singer, Mari Boine, and Alaska’s award-winning Pamyua with lesser-known
acts.
This year, the Ainu band
of Oki Kano and the Siberian group Ayarhaan, which means “the tribe of
the creator” or, as Riddu Riddu’s program says “girl power from
Yakutia,” took the festival by surprise.
Ayarhaan’s wildly
traditional music combines elements of of traditional throat-singing and Jimmy
Hendrix. Their home, Yakutia in central Siberia, is a place where temperatures
range from
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Oki
Kano is one of the foremost performers of contemporary Ainu music, a dub-like
mix of tonkori and double bass. “I urge all indigenous youth to return
to their villages,” Oki said before singing his wild “Salmon Song.”
The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan.
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-40 C in winter to 30 C
in the summer, an extreme sort of place that produces an extreme version of
throat singing.
“To survive you have
to be strong, so you can hear the strength in the music,” says Albina Degtyareva,
the group’s lead singer. “In Yakutia, you can feel and hear the power
inside you.”
Her mouth harp, or “khomous,”
looks like a pair of scissors with a metal tine sticking through the middle.
Yakutians traditionally used the khomous, which was said to have been made by
gods and possess a magical voice, to accompany their throat-singing.
But Degtyareva says that
20 years ago, only 10 people in Yakutia knew how to use the khomous. Raised
in a small village, with a family where the harp was still played, she was one
of only two people in Yakutia who felt confident enough to teach others how
to play.
Playing the khomous certainly
isn’t easy: you have to learn how to make the separate oo-aa-ay-e sounds
and then vary them by using your tongue. At the same time, your hand has to
stroke the harp in a certain way, moving it back and forward, “like dancing,”
slowly or fast, depending on the desired sound.
It’s the kind of music
someone has to teach you personally — and that’s what Degtyareva and
her two partners did this year in workshops at Riddu Riddu, showing an interested
group of festival-goers how to produce basic sounds on the khomous.
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Circumpolar
connection: Nunavik’s Maaki Putulik has performed twice before at Riddu
Riddu. On one of her trips she met Svein, the Saami father of her baby.
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At Riddu Riddu, sharing
traditional knowledge of all kinds is as important as music. Anté Mikkel
Gaup and 82-year old Ivvar-Niillas led a workshop on Saami joik for the Indigenous
Youth Camp. Formerly called the “Arctic Indigenous Youth Camp,” Riddu
Riddu’s youth camp has expanded to include all indigenous youth 18 to 30.
Every year Gaup comes to
the camp to teach joik: “I do it because I want to show the richness of
my culture.”
This year, Riddu Riddu
also featured an art exhibition, film festival, plays, poetry, workshops, hikes,
seminars and courses in cooking, sports, Saami language and indigenous songs,
and a children’s camp.
Riddu Riddu is all about
exchanging ideas and making connections. Does its magic work?
Just ask Maaki Putulik,
who has now performed three times at Riddu Riddu. She met the Saami father of
her baby boy there, and now plans to make Manndalen her home.
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