The Sami Yoik
-A unique form of cultural expression for the Sami people: a metaphor for their traditional culture. Like the Sami, the yoik has been misunderstood, ridiculed, appropriated, and threatened.
-The yoik is a form of song which uses a scale and vocalizations that are pretty unfamiliar to those in the American/European world, and is representative of the encroachment and abuse the Sami have suffered at the hands of colonists.
-The people and the yoik have adjusted to new global and local circumstances and continue to endure, but there’s still work to be done to preserve the traditional yoik.
-The yoik is not about something, it is something. The concepts of music and song in Western culture are not completely applicable to the yoik. It is almost exclusively vocal, the use of instruments (except the drum) are not expected with the traditional yoik, which was never meant to be performed as art, though it has many social functions (sharing memories, community building, self expression, calming reindeer or scaring off wolves, to transport between worlds).
-A yoik starts and stops suddenly, there is no start or ending. It is circular, but not one with Euclidean symmetry. It requires careful breath control since the vocalizations place stress on the throat and vocal chords, which results in outsiders describing the sound as harsh or nasal.
-Yoikers often use glissando notes, sliding in and out of pitches, making it difficult or impossible to accompany a yoiker with musical instruments.
-Through generations of oppression and conflict, the Sami retained their ethnic and cultural identities through solidarity. Community coherence, influence by various cultural expressions such as the yoik, enabled this survival.
-The yoik also promotes a sense of belonging on a personal level. Traditionally it was an adolescent’s rite of passage (akin to getting a name).
-Despite all of the social functions, yoiking is not limited to the public sphere: it’s just as common a solitary activity.
-It plays a crucial role in shamanism. A noaidi, or resident shaman, can use the yoik and the ceremonial drum to travel between the three worlds in a trance state to locate lost objects, find choice food or grazing areas, and looking after the health of those in the community, ensuring a balance withing the cosmological system.
-Three worlds consist of the “real” world of the livig, the Saivo world (paradise, where the Sami went after life on earth, and the upper world of the gods.
-The Sami have two souls, one with stays with the individual until death, and one which is capable of moving between two worlds even before death. Noaidi can travel between three.
-”The intent of Christian priests seems to have been the complete destruction of the old world-view, not just the shamanistic practices. Besides the traditions linked firmly to shamanism, the church judged many other unfamiliar customs to be heathen, like the secular tradition of yoiking” (Lehtola 28).
-The Sami moved the tradition underground and adapted the yoik to new circumstance: the archaic form of expression refused to be extinguished.Though the yoik was never meant to be performed as art, it became a sort of commodity, and lost important characteristics, so the traditional form is altered. It’s obviously better to have a Sami presence in the musical world, but an effort to preserve tradition must be made as well, since the yoik encompasses so many elements of the traditional world view.
