Song hunting tour in Arctic region
Oct 2019
we headed to Arctic region to make and record new songs.
We stayed and did some recordings in Inari Finland, small village of The Sámi.
Inari is small village ,located 300km north from Rovaniemi famous
for Santa Claus village.
There are Siida museum and Sajos we can study about Sámi culture.
Like visiting Zuni, we stayed kind of camp space about 1week
in Arctic forest.
The Sámi lives in the land called " Lap land( insulting term) ,now called Sámi land,
they are indigenous people and have own parliament in municipalities of Enotekio,
Inari,Utsjoki,Sodankyla.
Recently they have cultural communication with Ainu.
Sámi music is best known for yoik(joik),traditional way of singing as shaman,
but propagation of the christian faith destroyed traditional religion and shaman drums
then lost their traditional yoik.
In the past , because of assimilation policy of Finland,
they ware forbidden to speak Sámi language ,wear clothes and sing yoik.
like absolutely same in so many indigenous people.
But gradually they revitalize their culture now.
Before we visited there we have almost no information about Sámi as usual,
(because when we google it ,we can find almost articles written in Finish)
but we could get information at Sajos library and manage to get Taatsi Seida, sacred place of Sámi.
The place is also important in Archaeoacoustics (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/acoustics-of-sacred-sites)
When you sing in there, you can get great echo sound.
We went there for 2days,could record crystal tone of Kyra's voice in -1C cold air,
cloudy sky and no wind completely silence.
Next day we visited Lakselv ,felt like to see Arctic ocean,( it is not Arctic ocean,
but almost same...)
very beautiful place,Fjold,also we recorded singing there.
We hope to write about our recording tour in Finland again.
We get to work of new materials!
