- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 263, 2005
 

FRODE FJELLHEIM
Aejlies Gaaltije – The Sacred Source
Vuelie VUCD 801 (2004)

TRANSJOIK
Uja Nami
Vuelie VUCD 802 (2004)

      By the 17th century missionaries from more southerly parts of Norden were proselytising for Christianity among the Sámi, attempting to overlay their traditional beliefs and mythology and combining the teaching of literacy with religious conversion. Indeed the first two books written in a Sámi language were an ABC and a mass.
      For better or worse, it’s not unusual for a mass setting to be compiled from folk material – the Congo’s “Missa Luba” for example in the early 1960s. The format gives a musician the possibility of making a suite with vocals whose lyrics and landmarks are at least partly pre-structured. In The Sacred Source - An Arctic Mass, originally a live show at the Festspillene I Nord-Norge in Hallestad, singer and synth-player Frode Fjellheim uses traditional hymns, joiks, folk tunes and his own composition, with lyrics mainly in the South Sámi language, but also in Finnish, Norwegian, North Sámi and Latin. The singers are ex-Hedningarna Finn Sanna Kurki-Suonio, Sámi singer and joiker Ulla Pirttijärvi, and Fjellheim himself, interweaving with Kristin Høyseth Rustad’s classical but unmannered soprano. The hefty, deep-pulsing, non-ecclesiastical arrangements are as wide-screen and northern-brooding as the title might suggest, featuring the keyboards, electric guitar and percussion of Fjellheim’s band Transjoik plus Susanne Lundeng’s violin. Her playing throughout is as characterful as any voice; in the soaring Jubmelen Heevehtibie – Gloria she renders the slithering instrumental hook that makes that track one of the highlights.

      Transjoik is the same Trondheim band that, then called the Frode Fjellheim Jazz Joik Ensemble, in 1994 released a Sámi fusion classic, Saajve Dans. It’s now a quartet: Fjellheim on synth, Nils-Olav Johansen, a very interesting and unusual guitar player and joiker who’s also in the highly-recommended Norwegian band Farmers Market, and powerful percussionists Tor Haugerud and Snorre Bjerck, with Johansen and Fjellheim doing most of the vocals. There are, of course, similarities of texture between The Sacred Source and the band’s new album Uja Nami, but the latter is an assemblage of the band’s largely co-composed studio and live work over the past couple of years that, while not reaching the heights of Saajve Dans, is a pleasingly meaty, pacey thing of gruff vocals, abrasive sounds and slab-like grooves.


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw



You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -