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The Nordic Council Music Prize 2003 to Mari Boine from Norway
The musical sound of Saami language and cultureThe Saami artist Mari Boine from Norway has helped renew the proud musical traditions of the far north. The Nordic Council is to reward Boine with the 2003 Music Prize for her music and lyrics.
The word joik invokes immediate connotations: music from the North Calotte area, the folk music of the Saami people in Norway, Finland and Sweden.
New generations of musicians and composers have emerged in recent decades to renew Saami music, using it as a the basic sound for radical new experiments.
Mari Boine is one of the leading lights on the new Saami music scene.
Boine´s music defies facile attempts at labelling. It is based on joik but the complimentary stylistic ingredients include African rhythms, world music and rock-funk.
This description makes it sound like a musical pick´n´mix because language has a tendency to sound clumsy and generalised whenever you try to grasp and describe Mari Boine's music properly - a bit like trying to repair a watch with mittens on. Her art is so relevant because it reveals new ways of navigating the musical landscape.
Mari Boine upholds Saami tradition. Saami language and culture serve as the basic backdrop for her music. This traditional musical language also serves as a springboard to something non-traditional, however, to a norm-bursting, international music. Her lyrics are endowed with a poetic quality that carries the idiom to a certain extent.
Past and present
For a more in-depth understanding of joik as epitomised by Boine, you have to look at it from a historical perspective. The earliest joik songs were unaccompanied and in older Saami music the only accompaniment was the drum. The drum also plays a central role in Boine's music, as a basic beat solidly anchored in Saami tradition.
Two technical terms characterise her music: ostinato and pentatonic. The former is a musical starting point with a figure that is repeated throughout the piece. It can be varied and solos may be played over the recurring pattern. The latter is a five-tone scale used in many folk songs and which often serves as the basic scale in joik.
The repeated patterns with heavy electronic bass and insistent bass drumming bestows a ritual air upon her music - the listener feels almost like a member of a cult. For the traditional listener who seeks progress, it is to be found in the variations within rigid musical frameworks.
Boine has worked with musicians from a wide variety of genres: a few years ago she was part of World of Music, Nature and Dance, a project set up by the Senegalese musician Youssu N'Dour.
She also represented the Saami people in Peter Gabriel's major production A Week in the Real World.
Boine's voice has, understandably, made an impact outside the Nordic Region and Saami music in general is now heard more and more often abroad. Saami culture from the roof of the world - i.e. northern Finland, Sweden and Norway - is no longer considered a picturesque ethnic curiosity.
This is how the Nordic Music Committee (NOMUS) explained the award of the Music Prize 2003 to Mari Boine:
"Mari Boine has been one of the outstanding ethnic musicians in the Nordic Region for the last quarter of a century. Her work is characterised by its high artistic quality and she has put Saami music on the national, Nordic and international musical maps. She has managed to stick to the music's roots but also endow it with a contemporary idiom that reaches out to an enormous public all over the world."
"Boine has achieved international recognition for her many recordings and tours all over the world. Her musical curiosity and openness have also led to partnerships with some of the most important artists from a large number of different cultures."
Boine possesses an ethnic intuition, an artistic strength and powers of communication that touch us all, irrespective of cultural background".
- Nordic Council Music Prize
- Pictures of Mari Boine
- Fact sheet
- Nominations for the Nordic Council´s Music Prize 2003
- Nordic Music Committe NOMUS
Contact:
Nybrokajen 11
SE-111 48 STOCKHOLM
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Phone + 46-08-407 17 20 /407 17 21
Fax + 46-08-407 16 50
e-mail: gen.secr@nomus.org
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2007-08-24