Why Sámi Sing

Aubinet, Stéphane

doi:10.4324/9781003327691

Cited by 3 publications

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“…After conducting some interviews, learning the vocal technique enabled me to have more fruitful exchanges with yoikers by sharing with them my own experiences and to take more seriously the notion that the yoik is not merely a cultural object “made up” by the Sámi people but also a craft in its own right provoking a range of possible impressions (such as joy, pleasure, discomfort, excitement, relaxation, or exhaustion) that its practitioners discover through experience. This “open‐ended” dimension of the yoiking experience led me to try to establish dialogues with various anthropological or philosophical issues pertaining to animality, landscapes, presence, personhood, or temporality and more broadly to reflect on the relationships between yoiking and (academic) writing (Aubinet 2020). On a theoretical level, this approach is inspired by more‐than‐human approaches in anthropology (e.g., Ingold 2000; Viveiros de Castro 2014), philosophy of science (e.g., Despret 2021; Stengers 2005), and Indigenous scholarship and literature (e.g., Helander‐Renvall 2010; Kramvig 2005; Somby 2007; Valkeapää 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Elin Kåven, a yoiker, musician, and dancer from Karasjok, put it: “If I yoik someone and the yoik is very beautiful, it is not because I am good at creating yoiks, it is because that person is beautiful” (interview, 2017). Getting into a discussion about how yoiks are created would exceed the scope of this article (on this issue, see Aubinet 2020, 182–96). However, it is worth mentioning that one normally needs to be highly familiar with what is to be yoiked.…”

Section: In Presence Of the Past And The Distantmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This idea that one never yoiks “about” is indeed actually one of the most widespread notions I have encountered among Sámi yoikers; it came up in those exact words during nearly all my interviews. In this view, if the yoik has a “primordial” quality (to use Mari Boine's word, although its use evidently requires caution; see Aubinet 2020, 301–45), it lies not in a state of indistinction between words and melodies but rather in the melodies being nondiscursive (and one could even say nonsemiotic): their power does not stem from a capacity to convey meaning “about” the world but rather to engage with its presence with immediacy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…44I have personally found Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think (2013) helpful to analyze the process of creating new yoik melodies (Aubinet 2020, 203–10).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Meaning or presence? Ways of knowing of the Sámi yoik

Aubinet

2022

American Anthropologist

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This article approaches an Indigenous singing tradition, the yoik, practiced by the Sámi people in the north of Europe, as a way of knowing the environment through presence rather than meaning. The yoik consists of short unaccompanied melodies, often without lyrics, sung in everyday life, associated with a specific being (typically a person, an animal, or a place), and intended to make that being present. By exploring this capacity to invoke and intensify the environment's presence, this article seeks to take the yoik seriously and thereby offer a counternarrative to both semiotic and logocentric understandings of knowledge and human/nonhuman relationships. [knowledge, singing, semiotics, nonhuman, Sámi] ResumenEste artículo aborda una tradición indígena de cantar, el yoik, practicado por los samis en el norte de Europa, como una manera de conocer el ambiente a través de la presencia en lugar del significado. El yoik consiste en melodías cortas sin acompañamiento, a menudo sin lírica, cantadas en la vida diaria, asociadas con un ser específico (típicamente una persona, un animal o un lugar), y dirigidas a hacer ese ser presente. Al explorar esta capacidad para invocar e intensificar la presencia del ambiente, este artículo busca tomar el yoik seriamente y por tanto ofrecer una contranarrativa tanto a los entendimientos semióticos como "logocéntricos" de conocimiento y relaciones humano/no humano. [conocimiento, cantar, semiótica, no humano, Sami] RésuméCet article présente une tradition de chant indigène pratiquée par les Sámis dans le nord de l'Europe, le « yoik », en tant que manière de connaître l'environnement à travers la présence plutôt que la signification. Le yoik consiste en de courtes mélodies sans accompagnement, souvent sans paroles, chantées dans la vie de tous les jours et associées chacune à un être spécifique (typiquement une personne, un animal ou un lieu) qu'elles rendent présent. En explorant cette capacité à invoquer et intensifier la présence de l'environnement, cet article vise à prendre le yoik au sérieux afin de proposer une alternative aux approches sémiotiques et « logocentristes » de laThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: In Presence Of the Past And The Distantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…44I have personally found Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think (2013) helpful to analyze the process of creating new yoik melodies (Aubinet 2020, 203–10).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Meaning or presence? Ways of knowing of the Sámi yoik

Aubinet

2022

American Anthropologist

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The Musicolonial Politics of the Category of Man: The Case of Suriname

Susdorf

2024

Ethnomusicology

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This article examines the history of Suriname, a South American country that was a Dutch colony for three centuries, from the perspective of the colonial administration of sound. This period witnessed the construction of a particular understanding of the human in European colonial cosmology—the prescriptive category of Man, ideologically elevated above its animalized, gendered, and racialized others. Music and sound played pivotal roles in these processes. Accordingly, I show how the exploitation of people of African descent in Suriname was manifested in three sound-oriented colonizing tactics, all supported by various discursive reorganizations of the human-nonhuman boundary advancing the capitalist-colonial enterprise planted in the region: (1) an early modern silencing of the enslaved (ca. 1650–1770); (2) a post-Enlightenment sounding of them as part of their preparation for the abolition of slavery (ca. 1770–1900); and (3) an extractive synthesizing of non-European sonic traits persisting in the colonial dominion (ca. 1900-now). In sum, the article exposes a sonic lineage for the contemporary understanding of the category of the human to present a case of musicoloniality, a term I use to label diverse manners of sound management intended to enforce colonists’ authority and exploitative conditions of production from the 1600s to the present. Such a historical perspective urges us to extrapolate important questions about the posthuman and nonhuman theories that have gained traction in recent musicological scholarship.

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Laughter and the Art of Yoik in the Processes of Self-Representation and Resilience among the Samis of Jåhkåmåhkke (Swedish Sápmi)

Beyaert

2023

Anthropologie et Sociétés

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Why Sámi Sing

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Meaning or presence? Ways of knowing of the Sámi yoik

Meaning or presence? Ways of knowing of the Sámi yoik

The Musicolonial Politics of the Category of Man: The Case of Suriname

Laughter and the Art of Yoik in the Processes of Self-Representation and Resilience among the Samis of Jåhkåmåhkke (Swedish Sápmi)

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