The Samí musician Mari Boine has always been a fighter. Her latest album, Alva (Willpower), is a sterling example of the energy which drives her music: a joik-based vocal as grounded in the landscapes of northern Scandinavia as in contemporary big, soaring melodies. Earlier Boine albums – Gula Gula (1989) or Leahkastin (1994), for example – successfully established the musician as one able to give voice to a Samí culture in which music, shamanism and animism are entwined. On Alva, the focus turns inwards to an Indigenous culture suppressed, in this case, by Laestadian Christianity, a particularly joyless brand of Lutheranism.
An illustration of Boine’s metal is in the striking video that accompanies ‘Mu Eadni’ (‘Mother of Mine’): we see her, splendid in the deep reds of traditional dress, walking through groves, whirling on a hilltop, and finally, standing to catch our eye. These sensuously vital images depict a figure at peace with her strength. ‘If I could draw you close again / I would swathe you in silk and pearls,’ sings Boine. Her mother had been closed down by the fear engendered by religion, and this song is Boine’s powerful and tender return to her.
