Among the oldest expressions of Sami culture is the joik, a way of singing with no exact equivalent in European musical traditions. In North Sami it is called luohti, in other Sami languages vuolle or vuelie. Someone hearing it for the first time hears a short, repeated melody, often with few words or none. Those who practise it know that behind this simplicity lies a profound idea of the relationship between sound and what exists.
Joiking someone
The phrase the Sami use most often to explain the joik is this: you do not make a joik about a person, you joik the person. The song does not describe, narrate or celebrate from the outside. It makes present.
Each person can have their own joik, received as a gift from a relative or friend, often in childhood. The same is true of an animal, a place, a mountain, a lake. A person's joik captures their character, their way of moving, something essential that words cannot express.
This is why the joik has been called a «sound portrait». But even this definition falls short: for many Sami the joik has a relational dimension, almost a form of living memory. When one joiks someone who has died, they are called back into the community.
A form with no beginning or end
The traditional joik has some recurring features:
- short melodies, built on a few intervals, repeated with small variations;
- frequent use of syllables without lexical meaning alongside, or instead of, words;
- no narrative structure with a clear beginning and end: one can enter and leave the song at any point;
- performance traditionally by a single voice, without instrumental accompaniment.
This last point deserves attention: the noaidi's drum and the joik are often linked in the modern imagination, but in the older sources the everyday joik was an unaccompanied song, performed during work, travel and while watching over the reindeer.
The joik and the noaidi
The sources of the 17th and 18th centuries, however, also describe a ritual use of song. During the noaidi's sessions those present sang to accompany him on his journey and to call him back when his spirit was far away. The noaidi himself sang to enter trance and to address the spirits.
It was precisely this link with traditional religion that made the joik suspect in the eyes of the missionaries. For them it was not music, but a means of communicating with powers they considered demonic.
The condemnation
Pressure against the joik did not end with the trials of the noaidi. In the 19th century the Laestadian movement spread among the Sami of Sweden, Norway and Finland: a Lutheran revival linked to the preacher Lars Levi Laestadius, who was himself partly of Sami descent. The movement took deep root in Sami communities and, like other religious circles of the time, regarded the joik as sinful.
To this were added, in the 20th century, the assimilation policies of the Nordic states, which discouraged Sami language and culture in schools. In many families the joik became something to be ashamed of or to practise in secret.
The revival
Since the second half of the 20th century the joik has undergone a significant revival, running parallel to the growth of the Sami political and cultural movement. Some artists played a leading role:
- Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, poet, artist and musician, who brought the joik to international stages and performed it at the opening ceremony of the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics;
- Mari Boine, a singer who has combined the joik with rock, jazz and other world music.
Today the joik is heard at festivals, on records and in Sami schools, but it also continues to live in its most intimate form, within the family, when a joik is given to a child.
What it teaches us
The joik sheds light on a feature common to many Eurasian shamanic traditions: the idea that the voice has a power of presence. Song is not ornament; it is a way of entering into relationship with people, animals, the landscape and the dead. Those who study the traditions of the peoples of the North, as Studio Esoterico Cornelio does, find in the joik one of the most delicate keys to understanding them.
In short
- The joik is the traditional song of the Sami, called luohti, vuolle or vuelie in the different languages.
- One does not sing «about» someone: one joiks the person, place or animal, making them present.
- It was also used in the noaidi's sessions, and for this reason it was condemned by missionaries.
- In the 19th and 20th centuries it was discouraged by religious movements and assimilation policies.
- Today it is enjoying a revival, from the family to major stages.
