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Radiostation: Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE 1 Documentary Group
Producer:Jouko Blomberg
Artist: Wimme Saari
Time of participation:
Yoik is traditional Sami music - an archaic mode of unaccompanied solo singing. It is found all over the vast Samiland from the central regions of Scandinavia to the eastern tip of the Kola Peninsula. There are three musical dialects in yoik. Wimme represents the North Sami Iuohti tradition, which is the most widely known genre of Sami music. Luohti has two unique musical features: it makes use of a pentatonic scale with no half-tones and it always has a specific subject, a person or an animal, which it describes in music. On the new Wimme CD there are four traditional luohti yoiks: Jusse-vilba, Domnd, Bieggajorri and Albmdi.
During the last decades yoik in general has undergone some changes and in fact Wimme's yoiking could be called the free yoik. In his yoik Wimme constructs intensive, clear, melodic arches, sings in an expressive falsetto and uses al lot of improvisation, But the old yoik is still there: Wimme has recaptured the colour and grittiness of the ancient yoik, and even the clever voice technique of the animal yoiks.