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Nils-Aslak Valkeapää
Early life
Valkeapää was born on March 24, 1943 in Enontekiö in Finnish Sápmi to a family of nomadic Sámi reindeer herders.[1] His father, Johannes J. Valkeapää, was Finnish Sámi from the Kaaresuvanto area, while his mother, Ellen Susanna Aslaksdatter Bals, was Norwegian Sámi from Uløya in Troms.[2] Valkeapää lived in Finnish Sápmi until his father's death, when his family moved to Skibotn in Norwegian Sápmi.[3]
Valkeapää's mother tongue was Northern Sámi. However, like many Sámi children in the 1950s, he did not have access to formal education in his native language and did not learn how to write in Northern Sámi until adulthood.[1] Along with his early education in boarding schools, Valkeapää spent six years studying at the Kemijärvi Teachers' Training College, though he never worked as a teacher.[4]
Career
Music
Valkeapää first came into the public eye as a performer of traditional Sámi joik and was central to the revitalisation of the genre. His debut record, Joikuja, was released in 1968.[3] In 1973, folk and jazz musicians Seppo Paakkunainen, Ilpo Saastamoinen and Esko Rosnell invited Valkeapää on a musicians' retreat. During the retreat, Valkeapää was inspired by Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 and its African-American spiritual influences to develop fusion joik. In collaboration with Paakkunainen, he developed Juoigansinfonija, a jazz-joik symphony.[5] In 1978, Valkeapää released his jazz-joik record Sámiid eatnan duoddariid.[3] Valkeapää's music was somewhat controversial in Finland, both for his unorthodoxic inclusion of jazz elements and because Laestadian Sámi often viewed joik as immoral.[1][6] Valkeapää continued to perform jazz-joik and resisted efforts to "preserve" the traditional form, stating in his book Terveisiä Lapista: "When I hear talk of conserving the culture, I see an investigator of folklore in my mind’s eye, and interpret their activities quite literally: cataloguing a dead culture."[6]
- ^ a b c Drysdale, Helena (December 3, 2001). "Obituary: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää". The Independent.
- ^ "Nils-Aslak Valkeapää - the humble Sami world artist". Lásságámmi Foundation. 2007.
- ^ a b c Gaski, Harald; Haugen, Morten Olsen; Fredriksen, Lill Tove; Berg-Nordlie, Mikkel (2023-03-08), "Nils-Aslak Valkeapää", Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian), retrieved 2023-08-16
- ^ Hautala-Hirvioja, Tuija (2017). "Traditional Sámi Culture and the Colonial Past as the Basis for Sámi Contemporary Art". Sámi Art and Aesthetics: Contemporary Perspectives. Aarhus University Press.
- ^ Ramnarine, Tina K. (2009). "Acoustemology, Indigeneity, and Joik in Valkeapää's Symphonic Activism: Views from Europe's Arctic Fringes for Environmental Ethnomusicology". Ethnomusicology. 53 (2).
- ^ a b Dubois, Thomas A.; Cocq, Coppélie (2020). Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North. University of Washington Press.