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| Wimme |
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Wimme – voc
Tapani Rinne
Jari Kokkonen
Matti Wallenius
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The joik
is the highly personal and improvised vocal art of the Sami people. And Wimme is one of
the finest practitioners of this ingenious song-craft. Of the several varieties of yoik
that can be found all over the vast Samiland, from the central regions of Scandinavia to
the eastern tip of the Kola Peninsula, Wimme Saari – to give him his full name –
is representative of the North Sami tradition known as iuohti. The artist himself,
though, prefers to call his style «free yoiking». Saying by way of explanation that
besides relying on elements of the old style his performances draw inspiration from a
myriad of modern-day sounds.
Having publicly performed various folk-inspired material since 1982, Wimme came to pay
much closer attention to the authentic Sami music while working at the Finnish
Broadcasting Company. Hearing the tapes that featured his relatives yoiking, he decided to
dedicate himself full-time to the same song-form. In the following years he collaborated
with different Scandinavian ensembles (Hedningarna, Tallari, Pohjantähti, RinneRadio) and
made distinguished contributions to French composer Hector Zazou’s beauteous project
«Songs From The Cold Seas» (alongside artists like Björk, Värttina, Lena Willemark,
John Cale, Jane Siberry et al). By the mid-1990s time was certainly ripe for Wimme’s
solo recordings to appear. His debut, produced by RinneRadio’s Tapani Rinne, appeared
in 1995. And a singularly supple union of the ancient and the modern it was too:
Wimme’s intensely emotional yoiks – unedited, unaltered – were placed
clearly in the foreground, with discreet electronic ambience created around them. Into the
remainder of the 1990s Wimme fitted several tours in Scandinavia and in the rest of
Europe, a few performances in America, the releasing of his second solo album
(«Gierran», 1997), and the accepting of the Saari Alloihashi Award –the prize given
to the best Sami yoiker.
Wimme first visited Estonia 1989, as a guest lecturer at the folk music seminar arranged
by the Estonian Sami Society. In 1999 he headlined at the folklore festival in Viljandi,
southern Estonia. We are privileged to welcome him back now in Tallinn, at Jazzkaar 2000.
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