Uvjamuohta / Powder Snow

I pull a CD from my shelves and check the date: 2002. I remember being captivated by this album, In Our Foremothers’ Arms, featuring the bewitching voice of Sámi singer Ulla Pirttijärvi. She brought a youthful elegance to the traditional joiks she performed, and a clarity and a sense of adventure. Twenty years later and I am listening to her once again, this time as she sings alongside her daughter Hildá Länsman, discovering new joiks together which are inspired by springtime in the northern Sápmi lands. Pirttijärvi now brings a depth of time’s wisdom to her traditional vocals, while Länsman bears an uncanny reminder of her mother’s youthful elegance. Alongside these thoughtfully written words, instrumental textures weave percussion and strings and winds and sensitive programming through poetic texts, summoning up memories, the land. Some are hypnotic and trance-like. Some are adventurous like ‘Hans Laiti’s Yoik’, some playful and surprising such as ‘Oabbá / Sister’: ‘Let’s climb the highest mountain / let’s dance through life.’ There’s a hope and a beauty throughout the album: ‘Through snow flurries against the wind / The weather won’t stop us’ and a beauty in ‘Boastto Beal Joga / On the Wrong Side of the River’, a Länsman solo: ‘What about getting together? / Maybe! / Shall we try it one day?’