Introducing... Ánnámáret

Sámi singer Ánnámáret was born Anna Näkkäläjärvi-Länsman to a Sámi father and Finnish mother and lives as far north as you can go in Finland, in the village of Utsjoki, right on the Norwegian border. She comes from a reindeer-herding family and her husband is still involved in that business. Her solo album Nieguid Duovdagat (Dreamscapes) reveals her as one of the important figures treading that difficult line between tradition and modernity.

It’s the traditional song form joik that’s at the heart of Sámi music and on this album she’s inspired by the joiks of her grandfather and other family relatives. Sometimes they have lyrics, sometimes just sounds. It means that her voice, rather than a means of lyrical conveyance, serves as an instrumental texture much of the time. “Discovering your own family’s joiks helps to understand the whole Sámi worldview,” she explains. “I remember my grandfather, but I’ve only heard his joiking in the archives. I learn the joiks and I learn the style and then create my own joiks with the knowledge that I’ve got from listening to them. But I don’t quote them because joiks are too intimate and too personal to take to the stage.”

Joining Ánnámáret on the album are Ilkka Heinonen on bowed and plucked jouhikko (lyre) and Turkka Inkilä on shakuhachi (bamboo flute), two instruments with their own distinctive characters in the music, the shakuhachi glistening like a beam of light. “The sound of the jouhikko is somehow human and it sounds so well with joiking and my voice,” says Ánnámáret. Yet alongside these instruments Inkilä is in charge of a whole palette of electronics, which create Ánnámáret’s adventurous dreamscapes.

“It’s important to preserve the traditions,” she says, “but it’s important to make joik culture live in a new form. That’s the key to keeping the joik culture alive and making our traditional music live on to the next generation. I think we can feel a Sámi identity in the music.”

The first single from the album is called ‘Jearrat Máttárahkus’ (Ask the Foremothers) and Ánnámáret says that it is women who play the principal role in preserving the culture. The song has a driving force with a powerful low joik and a higher, softer, more feminine one. ‘Johtit Ain’ (Still Migrating), the most anthemic and celebratory song, is like a mythical journey of sisters to a new world. Ánnámáret certainly brings a female perspective to her vision.

Aside from creating her own music, Ánnámáret is deeply involved in Sámi music education, notably at the EU-funded Sámi Music Academy in Utsjoki. Set up in 2015, the Academy has had an advanced one-year course running since 2019. “The aim is to create a professional education for Sámi music. We used archives and many joikers in the education, with the result that many of the students took back their lost music traditions and adapted them to fit this time. It was so inspiring and touching to work with the students and see how music means so much for the identity.”

It gives an added resonance to the title-track of her album, on which she sings: ‘Shall we travel to the dreamscapes/To search for wisdom/ And to learn from the ancestors.’

Read the review of Nieguid Duovdagat in the Songlines Reviews Database

This article originally appeared in the June 2021 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today!