Nick Sherman / Simon Lynge / Sihasin


Nick Sherman, Ghost Town. You can read more about Nick here.

Simon Lynge (Scandanavian Inuit), Love Comes Back. You can read more about Simon here.

Sihasin, Take A Stand. This is Jeneda and Clayson (Navajo), founding members of Blackfire. You can read more about Sihasin here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj57V7rsza0

Comments

  1. says

    I’m running this thing in one of my classes where each lesson one of the kids gets to play a song while I check their homework. OK, so far they’ve been listening to my music because I only took over recently, but I think one of them chose Nick Sherman, Ghost Town.
    I’m not 100% sure ’cause the list is in class…

  2. Ice Swimmer says

    Sihasin sounds great.

    It seems that some Native American singing has some similar elements as Saami* joik form of singing. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know much about the Saami music scene. Angelit/Angelin tytöt used to be a famous joik group (the Länsman sisters are nowadays doing other things, Ursula keeps reindeer in the north and Tuuni works in a kindergarten in Helsinki). Mari Boine is active and she does joik.


    * Saami are the indigenous people of Fennoscandia, currently living in the north, as you may know. They speak Fenno-Ugric languages closely related to each other, more distantly related to Finnish and Estonian.

  3. says

    Ice Swimmer:

    It seems that some Native American singing has some similar elements as Saami* joik form of singing.

    Yes, there are! Saami were the cultural performers at the 39th UTTC pow wow in 2008. Ante Mikkel Gaup and his daughters Sara Marielle and Lena Susanne represented the culture of indigenous European people. I haven’t kept up with the Saami music scene either, something I should correct.

  4. rq says

    Which reminds me, the last set of women singers you posted reminded me of some local traditional music, as culturally revived through older recordings and people just getting into the historical aspects of folklore*. Here’s a spring song -- and yeah, less about the subject matter but more the style of singing: as I mentioned before, as a choral singer, this type of vocalization is pretty far from how we’re taught to sing, a different kind of voice/breath control -- basically, designed to carry over long distances (most Latvian traditional songs of this sort are for singing outside while working the fields or shepherding animals, to communicate with those working in the next field/forest, sometimes with call-and-response, but mostly to keep everyone in rhythm). ANYWAY the point being it’s a very impressive skill to do it right.

    * The problem being that, with a lot of the cultural revival, there’s a lot of exclusionary nationalism coming with it, which makes me sad. Kind of ruins the whole idea for me, if you can’t bring the past with you while including the (potential) future/present (esp. with re: to refugees and people of varying sexual orientation). Different story for another time, I suppose.

  5. says

    rq:

    Here’s a spring song

    Oh, how beautiful! I will be listening to more. Thank you.

    * The problem being that, with a lot of the cultural revival, there’s a lot of exclusionary nationalism coming with it, which makes me sad.

    Unfortunately, that happens with a lot of music. I really like listening to Wardruna, but I also cringe at all the racists assholes who have embraced it. I think it’s great that so many varied people are discovering their roots, and bringing back traditional music and singing, but there are always going to be doucheweasels latching on to it.

  6. rq says

    but there are always going to be doucheweasels latching on to it

    Ugh, and how! Even groups that mean well get co-opted by people with political agendas bent on racial ‘purity’. Not that anyone’s a pure anything anymore, but people certainly have a talent for ignoring the parts that they don’t like.

  7. says

    rq:

    Not that anyone’s a pure anything anymore

    Wouldn’t it be great if people figured that out? I’m pretty sure I won’t live long enough to see that happen, if it ever does.

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