Soia Jannok

One of those accidental discoveries... was wathing The Natural World last week about Sami reindeer herders and one of the program segments was about joiking, a Sami folk style that tries to create the essence of a place, person or thing in song. I'd come across it briefly via Martyn bennett's excellent Bothy Culture, where it gets a characteristically contemporary twist, and listing to that I had a dig in the Wiki... One link led to another and I ended up at Sofia Jannok's web site, listening to some samples that I liked very much. While joiking is clearly a fundamental part of the music it's closer to "normal" song structures with a band on all but one of the tracks. All quite haunting and evocative, nice use of instrumentation, worth a listen. I'm now listening to her "White" CD, and no regrets about the purchase at all.

Pete.