Arctic Funkies

The beguiling music of the Norwegian Sami band Adjagas - think Planxty jamming with Sigur Rós - is unlike anything you've heard. Lawra Somby tries to explain it to Brian Boyd.

As he crunches his way through the Norwegian snow, Lawra Somby of the Sami group Adjagas, patiently tries to explain all about yoiking, his Sami background and his cultural upbringing.

"The Sami people are the indigenous people who live at the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia," he says. "We have been very much oppressed over the years, mainly because of a series of land rights problems with the Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Russian governments. You can compare the Sami to the Aborigines of Australia or the Native Americans; many of the bad things that happened to those people also happened to the Sami.

"Although I grew up in Oslo, I'm from a Sami family and, when I formed Adjagas with the vocalist Sara Mariella Gaup, I wanted to represent traditional Sami music. To do that you have to use the yoik, which is a traditional Sami musical form.

"We did the album in the Sami language because Norwegian is a very unmusical language and because the use of the yoik makes it very personal. Basically, a yoik is not about something or somebody, but is about the idea of something or somebody. Yoiks are always very personal."

Yoiks also make for a beautifully beguiling form of music. The Adjagas album is quietly picking up rave reviews and has somehow managed to avoid the dreaded "world music" category, instead slipping into a sort of Sigur Rós/Cocteau Twins/Mazzy Star - sui generis - category. It's ambient-electronic folk music with tinges of alt.Americana and passionately expressive vocal stylings. Quite unlike anything you've heard before - unless in a parallel world you happened upon an impromptu Planxty/Sigur Rós jam in the Arctic Circle - Adjagas is a magnificent musical experience.

Somby has heard the Sigur Rós comparison but can't see it himself. "I think it's only because sometimes Sigur Rós sing in their own made-up language , and people regard that as an alien language just like they regard the Sami language as an alien language."

Adjagas should have broken through before. Two years ago they played at a show high on a Norwegian mountain plateau.

In the audience that day was one of the musical bookers for the Glastonbury Festival, who was "gobsmacked" by their performance and immediately offered them a prestigious slot at the 2005 event alongside The White Stripes and The Killers.Torrential rain prevented Adjagas from taking to the stage, but they're due another run out at this year's Glastonbury.

Somby (26) is actually a city kid who grew up skateboarding and listening to "rap, punk, reggae and alt.country music". It was only after going to a traditional Sami music festival a few years ago that he decided to get in touch with his cultural roots and taught himself how to yoik from a series of cassette tapes. "I'm completely self-taught," he says.

After he hooked up with vocalist Gaup, the pair decided to record original music only.

"We didn't want to do renditions of old Sami tunes. We wanted to do the songs in the tradition but make some of them quite aggressive, like rock music, and make others very quiet and stripped down. It is quite a sparse album but that's because we wanted to preserve the vocals, which would have got lost if we added too many elements to the mix. Also, we didn't want an ethnic crossover album. We wanted a real, new album."

For Somby, the yoik takes centre stage in each song. "We write the accompaniment to the yoiks and not the other way around. The yoik is always at the centre of the song. I think it is a very strong form of expression that can communicate directly with people. It's about transporting the listener to a different place.

"The yoik can be very powerful - almost hypnotic. I do feel that, in some way, the yoiks arrive; it's not just me composing them. I find that they always reflect what is going on in my life at that particular time. They're always changing as they reflect new aspects of a person's life."

Somby still remains surprised by how little the Norwegians know about the Sami people. But then, the Sami are Scandanavia's dirty little secret. Numbering about 60,000, the Sami claim they have been swindled out of their land. As late as the 1950s it was illegal to speak Sami, or to yoik, in Norwegian schools. The situation for the Sami in Sweden, Finland and Russia was not much different.

"They just don't learn about the Sami in Norwegian schools and not many people here could tell you an awful lot about the Sami," says Somby. "There has been a very good reaction in Norway to the album, and now that it's available in other countries, I'm very glad to bring the Sami to the attention of other people."

Adjagas is out now on the Ever label. The band will tour Europe later this year