Markomeannu and onward

            There was again the perpetual stomping of feet around the lavvo, the reverberated heavy bass echoing off the mountains, the drunken yelps of joy, lust, and too-muchness throughout the long-lit night. I wandered around again, found friends with whom I could speak, sleep and leave my things, spoke with yoikers and musicians, and jammed with people with words and life's notes.

 

Highlights –

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Joik battle – There was this competition for the best yoiker, for one to prove their skills and self with 30 seconds and a phat beat. I dared myself to do this - go big or go home, right? – walking up to the people backstage with my newly found Norwegian friend and asking to join the competition even though sign-ups were over. “Gumption" is a word my father taught me, and I guess I learned it well enough to go on stage in front of hundreds of people on a concert stage and essentially do karaoke in a style I have only tasted in my body for a few weeks. I also had two reasons for joining the battle:

1.     I 1.) I figured when they said Brian Dolphin from New York, who came to Norway to learn about yoik and how to yoik, that yoikers and others would come my way and talk to me or help me to learn.

2.     I 2.) I thought it would mean something to Sami people, who in their process of cultural revival perhaps feel honored when an enthusiastic foreigner comes so far to learn about their rich culture.

And the result: I won!

… one round against two Sami, that is.

In the second round, when they made us yoik to the theme of “flirting”, I picked a duck yoik – cause they strut their stuff when the waddle, no? – and added my own Norwegian lyrics: “You are my heart. It beats…” and Sami: “… I love you”. Tragicomically, I lost to a little girl.

I did really win though cause people recognized my sincere effort, or at least enjoyed the comedy of a “New Yoiker” on stage. Also those professional yoikers I walked up to recognized me and already had advice for my yoiking.

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On the last night of the festival the professional yoiker who won the contest was roaming around the campsite with his wife, having conversations and yoiking. I remember when I first saw this man at Riddu Riddu. I knew he was special and that I had to speak with him; when I tried though, the language gap was too vast, and so until that night we had only exchanged the simplest of small talk and kind words.

Like a moth to a flame I swooped by him to record his yoiking, and then he turned to me and let my microphone have some more quality material. After a few minutes we were sitting down and he was yoiking for me and asking me to follow along. Then we sat down and took turns yoiking this tune about a foreign girl who comes to Kautokeino that none of the guys could get.  In each round I felt as if both my ability to yoik and my ability to be aware and present in a higher mode of learning rose and rose. These turns only ended when I reached my own boundary and felt the compulsion to laugh at how hard it was to yoik in his exceptionally evolved style and with those sharp quarter tones he repeated at exactly the same frequency every time. Still, while he was lifting me into this state of learning and as our voices melded into a sonic unity of bright, bristling overtones, nothing else existed.

He was surprised and happy with my yoiking, and said wouldn’t normally teach yoik in this setting or almost any other, but he too felt something special about me and recognized my craving to learn. This was my second real yoiking lesson and so impactful because in this man’s voice, he was fully expressed, and all his warmness and wisdom felt. Yoiking is about the feeling, the embodiment of spirit in music, and in those who really know how to do/be it, the very breath of life vibrates; it shakes those walls we construct against the world into rubble and leads our bodies’ cells in a jolly romp of a dance (cymatics - Google Search).

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As for the musicians there, to me Inga Yuuso, Adjagas, and Johan Sara Jr.stood out the most. They carve their niche at the nexus of traditional yoik and modern instrumentation; such music confronts listeners and musicologists equally because it is so unlike anything one can readily categorize, and it embraces their lineage in a modern context.

Some clips from Markomeannu are at this page: youtube.com/user/bridylph 

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Yoik is about relationship

A man from Sweden - whose mother is Sami and who learned yoik from her and his Grandfather - said that the yoik we hear today is not real yoik, it is just part of modern music. He told me that real yoik is about building relationships between beings; he then proceeded to yoik the nearby patch of flowers.

Something about this moment was a bit too much for me, since here was this man manifesting song from nature right in front of me, staring intently and remaining completely still but for the melody dancing out of him. He was connected and in the moment, so real that I wanted to pull back into the familiar world of academic skepticism, deny that his melodies had anything to do with the flowers, and cease upon his sincere vulnerability. If I did this, perhaps I would have played the part of colonizer, exploiter of nature, machine-made-man; I would have been the rigid, silent slave who tries to enslave passionate, singing freedom out of fear that I also could surrender all my control and notions of the world to this same flow and melody.

This was a man of nature, a fisherman and hunter who was taught to let live the most beautiful creatures he caught on his hook or in his crosshairs, rather than make them into trophies on a mantle. He knew not only of his inherent "dominion" over nature (Genesis 1:26), but that it was his mission to serve its highest interests rather than just consume its fruits without regard. By letting the most beautiful specimens of nature live, he not only stayed true to his heart's deep appreciation of nature but also pragmatically let the genetics of these released animals spread and create more such elegant beings; in such a symbiotic act is the philosophy that one can live content and not sacrifice the higher to the lower, and also that there are enough resources in the world.

He used yoik more as it was traditionally used – though perhaps he was no shaman – transcending the ego and otherness to connect with things enough to sing, honor, and remember them. Thus he feels justified in saying that yoik as it exists today is not real. Is yoik still real or natural when it is adapted to pop aesthetics, auto-tuned to equal temperament, processed with effects, put into a mix with synthesizers and other electronic instruments, recorded in a stringently isolated environment, and played back the same – regardless of context - every single time?

There is no one final answer to this very leading question, but let me explain what I think is his perspective by speaking of nature. One of its most fundamental attributes - alongside the diverse movement of life and various cycles governing its existence- is relationship[1]. True, styrofoam comes from nature, but its relationship to nature is very dissonant. Crunch styrofoam up and put it in a warm compost heap and it will still take decades to decompose, whereas wet leaves will become soil within days. So, sure heavily processed music is natural, but give it to ears and the environment and is it taken and digested[2]? Play rock music for plants and they die (The effect of Music on Plants (The Plant Experiments), in concert humans lose their ability to hear, and I'd venture to say that more car accidents and violent crimes happen when rock music is blasting than when Indian classical music is. In terms of power structure, once music is put on stage or the radio, it enshrines false idols with resources of instruments and production – and of course skill - that the public cannot access; this in turn leads people to think they are like musical serfs if they do not attain the popularized standard of “musician”. Lastly, since music is made as a product for consumption, a lot of it appeals to the lifestyles and high fructose tastes of those who spend the most money... its message will conflate love with fucking and/or co-dependently needing someone, self-worth with ego, having fun with losing control (not thinking, getting drunk, tossing around money), and all those other great things that our economic system corrupts in order to gain capital.

I illustrate this dystopic vision of music gone bad in order to show that this man I spoke with had a valid point in saying that modern yoik - which partially enrolls such negative tendencies - is not that “real yoik”, which directly seeks symbiosis. Then again this purist view is short-sighted, for music is a tool we use to relate to ourselves and the world, and our world – in sharp contrast to the nature once known so intimately by the Sami – is one with technology, processing of every sort, and a growing urban setting. In order to get through to us and express us, we need the crunch of electric guitars, synthesized sounds, screaming and minor chords, for such is our world. Yoik, as with any music, has changed to accommodate the change in its people, but it function is fundamentally the same in that it seeks relationship. It is in how our music affects us, and how our food does, that the character behind it – and so our society and world – is revealed. Thus when this man said that modern yoik is not real yoik, his value judgment was idealogical, concerning the often parasitic nature of our society and its products, rather than aesthetical.

A good final question is how is it that such artificial music can still be catchy? How can McDonald's still taste good? Why would nature allow us to enroll ourselves in such unhealthy things via our senses? Perhaps this is another line of questioning that points to the problem of evil, a.k.a. how can a God - or being such as Nature - that is all good and all powerful allow for such profound evil to exist in the world....

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One question I asked during Markomeannu was "how do I learn yoik?" My favorite answer came from a professional yoiker, whose lineage in yoik is well-renowned. He said was that I had to I had to go where I could experience the context in which it exists, get deeply in touch with the Sami worldview, way of life and sentiment. He said the emotional aspect was first; otherwise, I could learn the technique of yoik just by listening to CDs and mimicking them. Essentially, what he said was I had to form relationship with the people who knew yoik, and through them I could form a relationship with that more amorphous entity from which yoik emerged, whether that be Sami culture, language, or nature. Thus, via connection is yoik both birthed and passed on.

Echoing this sentiment was what two professional musicians from Tromsø told me. Though they were of Sami origin and both seemed to me to yoik quite well, yet they said that they could not yoik because they were not raised in the context of Sami culture, in which yoiking and all its meaning would be passed on to them. They said they could do the technique but still not yoik.

In conclusion to this long entry, Nature is about relationships and so is music. Nature, also, encompasses everything, yet there is still a degree to which we can consider some things more or less natural based on their ability to feed back into the cycle from whence they came. The degree to which music feeds back into its cycle - which maybe we can think of as making meaning, its means and ends intimately related – in feeling more, connecting with people/places/things, remembering, working harder, focusing, etc. The value of music - like food -  is in its relationship to the people, because it has the potential to serve, or at least support, all of our needs.

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[1] Music, like nature, can also be thought of in terms of it diverse, cyclic movement and the relationship therein. Since in all things there exists unique life and relationship, we can always think analogically about the world, especially since the same things that affect plants and animals also affect us and our myriad creations; the magic is in converting one form to another, distilling thought into art, life to music, and vice versa.

[2] Perhaps there is something about the repetitious nature of yoik that allows it to be digestible (memorable).  It is also mostly pentatonic – a very natural scale found all over the world - such that all notes are harmonious with all others; perhaps this is why yoik is so easily adaptable (digestible) to virtually all musics and instruments. What is the nutrition of music? What cycles does it play into?

Hey yo lay lo lay lo lay lo

Walking to the bus to Riddu Riddu festival, I saw a group of backpackers walking in the same direction; flying solo with my backpack on I joined their flock.

 "Where are you from?" "Norway." "Where are you from?" "New York." "Are you on vacation?" "No, I came here to learn yoik." "We'll you'll sure get a lot of that at Riddu."

That first night we camped and cooked together, and shared everything.

Riddu was amazing. Not only was there quite the lineup of international musicians, vendors, and people, but – cheesy as it may sound – people really came together. We all got into music of kinds we’ve never heard before, deep conversations and experiences with perfect strangers, and a spirit of collective enjoyment that lasted throughout the long-lit night and in the worst of weather.  Coming down from the feeling and excitement of the festival, I wonder what the meaning of it was for all of us and in general in the world.

Through this festival the Sami, indigenous people of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Western Russia, in the spirit of reclaiming their cultural pride after centuries of discrimination, and forming their identity now in a modern context, have reached out to other indigenous groups the world around. At Riddu, these people mingle, as do their children, and their musics. Perhaps each group has a global support group in their struggles to keep their identities and land, and with these diverse representatives coming every year to the festival, the local community is forced to recognize the power and personality of Sami culture. It is beautiful to see globalization foster these new types of communities.

"Over and over I have the feeling that people here get it… know the ways, stories, histories, and music of the world and are interested in learning and expressing more in it. We speak of things that matter. Nonchalantly people say, “Art is the act of being in the now”. The people I meet are very open, to do as they please yet within a group contract, such that everyone contributes. Everyone has a voice but speaks in a language all around can understand. We are information-mongers, philosophers on top of the world, making it spin faster. Everyone here knows how to make a fire, live in nature (to an extent).

People come and go to each other’s lavvos – teepees – and put a drink in your hand and a hand on your leg. I wander around learning throat singing most intimately, jamming, and figuring out the melodies of yoiks. Some people here speak seven languages and carry around jaw harps and dried deer meat, prepared for the world and whatever it may bring.

Awe strikes me so. Pragmatism and idealism together? Feeling thinking people. “

Some of the music: Riddu Riđđu : Concerts

-After the festival I get settled in an apartment with three ladies, one of which I became friends with at the festival. The freedom is amazing and terrifying, standing on a road about to hitchhike... deciding which direction to go… back to the libraries, new friends and contacts of the city or into an unknown Sami town where I have very few resources and leads, but in which yoik is readily palpable. Seeing a lone Seagull flying North and one of those few people I connected to at first sight inviting me in their car to Tromsø, I choose that world for the moment.

-Because I am new here and my project necessitates culling information from many sources, I am forced to walk up to people I feel connections with, in most any context, and speak with them. Following my intuition has always been right - or at least harmless - and though pushing the envelope of one's comfort is perhaps the most terrifying process, since it undoes that packaged, discrete sense of oneself, it is one of the most rewarding. This method expands the self, and since it embraces and cultivates the relatedness of people (rather than the isolationist, “there’s no time or need to talk to ‘outside’ people”, “strangers are dangerous” modern view), it is essential in a methodology regarding nature, in which one has relationship to the entirety of the world around. Most generally, cultivating strong and positive relationship in one’s life – to one’s food, job, family, community, various expressions, etc. – is a way of getting into a more natural state

-Feeling stuck and away from yoik and Sami for too long I contacted yoikers and decided it was time to go to Kautokeino - the left ventricle of the heart of Sápmi in Norway- soon. Somehow I got invited to a wedding in Alta via facebook; from there I could hitchhike to Karasjok and then Kautokeino to make further connections, learn how to yoik, and talk to people about the meaning of yoik. My contact shaded out on me so I decided to do the open-ended solo venture thing. The night before, in search of laundry detergent, I came across two new friends of mine; after chatting a bit, one of them said he was going to go record a man yoiking in Sapporo, Sweden the next day, and from there he would go to Kautokeino. C'est la vie.

Driving with him in the open, people-free landscape, I heard silence, felt time coming instead of going. In this nature, untouched but for the road we drove on, I was terrified, out of my element of the domesticated, gridded, electromagnetic, card-swiping, small-talking, passerby world. I realized how utterly terrified I am of nature and its mystery. I got the feeling that in my cultural history, at some point man was overwhelmed by the vast magic and quick karma of the world and decided not to serve it, but to control it. In this way, we would not have to bow to the forces of nature or eventually even take note of them, so long as we could keep them at bay, insulated by highly refined materials from around the colonized world. Somehow we made adaptation an external process, a materialistic one; we made more time and more tools, then came farming and animals as tools, and so civilization at large.

About yoik:

First off, I am not writing a scholarly article and I have only been here for a couple months. An understanding of yoik would take many, many years and a keen understanding of  Sami history and culture, but here are some things I have heard thus far:

My driver/friend/informant said how when person yoiks came to him, he felt he had to share them, and record them so as to not be selfish, to honor the person, and perhaps even the process whereby that yoik came to him.

He talked about how the radio homogenizes yoik, shows a popular and commodifiable version of it and that this over time changes the aesthetic of yoik (because we sing what we hear). One difference, which is most easy to hear, between the Sami yoiks and Sami Radio yoiks is the difference in meter; playing in a band, the yoiker is most often forced to accommodate the other musicians. Thus the yoiks - at least the majority of those I've heard this summer at four Sami music festivals - in 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8 get played more. Additive rhythms (8+10 or 2-3, 2-2-2-3-3, 2-5-2-3, 2-5-2-5, as with Johan Sara Jr.) are used only by bands comfortable with meter change/asymmetrical phrasing.

Otherwise, the yoiker, instead of pausing to breathe at the end of one of the sub phrases or even in the middle of the phrase, must breathe in a way so as not to disturb the flow of the music. The sense of the circularity of the yoik – implied since the melody seems to never end when the pauses in its singing always change location – is interrupted by breathing in the same place every time a phrase is sung, which must be done if the band is to stay together. The tonic or key of a yoik also cannot gradually rise during the course of a yoik, and the notes used are almost always constrained to equal temperament, thus undoing two more special elements of yoik-song.

Perhaps such "normalizing" just happens to occur when a solo singing tradition merges with instruments. As a benefit of yoik being added to music, however, there is the inclusion of yoik on the radio and concert stages around the world. Thus Sami culture can express itself to itself and anyone who wants, or happens, to listen to it. Through this adaptation whereby yoik is integrated into music, there is both regeneration and compromise. Yoik is more easily enjoyed more by outsiders and people with contemporary music aesthetics when it is packaged in music; yoik thus gets into more countries and homes, but it is not yoik in the same way that the Sami knew it for centuries. In this era of globalization, when marketing something, especially culture, is there always some aspect of the "original" expression that must change in accordance with the aesthetics and philosophies of the outside world?

Western culture must have changed the aesthetic - a least a little - of yoik through the centuries; from the church songs of the missionaries and priests, through the process of Norwegianization (in which yoik was made illegal for well over a hundred years), and into the modern era in which other musics are constantly heard through the radio, television, and internet. Then again, it is in the nature of culture to change, so perhaps one not need be such a purist when considering yoik's outside influence. I think only where culture is lost, from its practice and meaning, is there something really wrong; however in some absolutist, and partially consolatory, sense when something ceases to exist it ceases to be necessary. I cannot fully endorse this point, just as I cannot endorse colonization, but I think there is a way in which ancient ways and functions of yoiking, and expressing/acting in accordance with traditional culture in general, are less valuable – or are at least perceived to be such - today. For example, modes of predicting the weather from antiquity, such as observing the behavior of animals, the movement of the wind and qualities of the clouds, become less preferable or even obsolete when compared with a 5-day forecast made with scientific instruments by a meteorologist; acapella yoik in the more traditional, glottal style would not make people dance or feel festive in the same way that modern yoik, sung, would in the context of electric guitars playing in a contemporary style.

Thus is the value of the manifestations of traditional, indigenous culture reliant upon the values of modern society, and unless the modern ways of being and doing are clearly more advanced – which would be impossible to evaluate, since there can be no objective means for doing so – the adaptation of culture is a product of survival, but not necessarily evolution.

Concerning the origins of yoik as a part of the “Old Sami Religion”, I feel as if something has been lost, for I hear that this mode of expression died out with the burning of Shamans, their drums, and a great deal of pressure from outsiders denouncing all displays of such "devilish ritual". I cannot confirm that yoik is not used in this manner, however, and from speaking with people about their beliefs and customs which are very much aligned with the Sami religion, I doubt that there are no shamans here yoiking to enable trance and passage to other worlds and layers of reality. It is a shame though that this function was denounced by the authorities, and so as control was gained, some of the meaning of yoik and a methodology for learning was lost. On the other hand, the medium of yoik is so powerful that it still has a great deal of meaning/function. Some of the uses of yoik I have heard are:

1) It is meditation, a place to put focus and allow the swift passage of time and even space. It allows one to connect, remember, and concentrate on the being, attributes, and one’s own relation that what one is yoiking. Thus, when all alone in the winter herding the reindeer, it is a friend.

2) Yoiking someone tells them how one is feeling. If a parent is proud they may yoik the child and the child will feel acknowledged; one person also told me that if the child was behaving in a bad way that a parent could yoik the child and stir them, tell him/her to wake up to what they're doing.

3) Making a yoik for someone or something acknowledges it in Sami society. Yoik exists in some way as a musical world mirroring our own, and to exist in this world means to be loved to such an extent that someone wishes to meditate on your very being, and when they yoik you to others, for them too to experience the goodness of your presence. Of course this makes the person yoiked very happy.

4) Yoik describes things - attitude, appearance, movement, feeling, etc. – in a way that only music can.

5) It is a symbol of Sami culture, and through it do the people express themselves to a wide audience.

There is sooo much more…