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SCRIPTED AND EMBODIED RITUALITY IN A YOIK-NOH PERFORMANCE
Artists of the Sami theater and performing arts quickly understood the yoik’s
potential to become the ideal trademark and export product of Sämi culture.
Based on small-scale melody, with variable rhythmic patterns, the poetics
of the living yoik are flexible, allowing for a large degree of adaptation and
incorporation of outside elements while remaining identifiable as a yoik. For
example, modern yoik singing can accommodate the rhythms of the African
djembe drum, American country and rock ’n’ roll, and even Hawaiian music
or the Indian tabla, as well as Burundian whisper music with further elements
of pop, rock, jazz, blues, rap, or techno, while Sami music itself has lent its
own influence to traditional and commercial music. Since many Sami artists
were exposed to these genres from an early age (however not in their mother
tongue), it was challenging, but not especially difficult, to develop a specific
Sami theater practice. And today, though the indigenous population of Sami
does not always enjoy favorable conditions for their cultural survival and re¬
vival, there are publishing houses and theaters in all of the four countries
where the Sami live (in the North of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Kola
Peninsula of Russia, where their traditional homeland is now situated).
NILs-ASLAK VALKEAPAA (1943-2001)
The most recent grand Sami master, Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, was versed in many
languages and cultures (e.g., North Sami, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and
English). He was highly knowledgeable about his own indigenous tradition but
also familiar with many other traditions and contemporary cultural practices
around the world, including indigenous and non-indigenous, ancient, modern,
and postmodern. Endowed with excellent social skills, as well as multiple tal¬
ents as a writer, painter, composer, actor, and performing artist, he managed
to form stable artistic relationships with a handful of other people in order to
pioneer new Sami artistic forms and bring them to a position of global visibil¬
ity by the beginning of the twenty-first century. At ease with verbal, musical,
and theatrical performance and improvisation, he partook in several kinds of
ritualistic events around the globe, be it a Native American tribal ceremony,
a literary festival in Oslo, or performing with shakuhachi flute performers in
Japan.
Valkeapaa’s visits to Japan started in 1988, when he read his poems and
sang yoiks at a literary performance of Nordic authors in a Noh theater hall
in Tokyo. His performance was very well received by the Japanese audience,
and this formed the basis of a lifelong connection to Japan. Cultivating close
friendships with Japanese experts in his home country helped Valkeapaa to ex¬
tend his insights into different Japanese artistic and spiritual traditions, mainly
73.