Joining forces to delve deeper experimental music and sound at Borealis 2024 festival, Vers Libre presents a series of specially curated mixes from festival artists, breakfast shows with live guests during the festival and a series of conversations on Sámi listening practices, cultural erasure and the complexity of experimenting with tradition.

All podcasts, talks and mixes are available for listening back here.

Signe Emmeluth
First up, Signe Emmeluth presents a music session, which, in the artist’s own words, “inspires me, tickles my dancing bones, and just makes sense to me”. Musician and composer, Signe Emmeluth has selected an hour of mix to kick off our collaborative programme with Borealis Festival for 2024.

Elina Waage Mikalsen
Elina Waage Mikalsen is a guest artist and co-curator of this year’s festival programme. Elina has put together a one hour taster of Sámi experimentalism in sound featuring artists that will be performing at Borealis as well as archival joiks, personal favourites and a classic from Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. Elina Waage Mikalsen will be performing “Stáinnarbánit (Wolffish Teeth)” at Bergen Kjøtt on 14.03.24.

Viktor Bomstad
Viktor Bomstad is an experimental guitarist and joiker. About the mix, Viktor says: “The mixtape consist of music that has inspired me in one way or another over the last years. I have included traditional joik that has inspired me as a joiker, and also music that inspired me as an instrumentalist and improviser.” Viktor Bomstad will perform his commissioned piece Mosku for a swimming audience at Nordnes Sjøbad on 17.03.24. Expect desolate landscapes, feverish meditations on noisy themes sprinkled with the occasional glimmers of hope!

Kim Myhr
Composer and 12-string virtouso Kim Myhr opens the Borealis Festival 2024 with his commission Celeste – a piece for 12-string guitars that will be performed by 50 hands strumming 600 strings. His Borealis mix reflects this social element to music. About the mix he says: “A lot of the tracks on the playlist are quite rich in their materiality and sound, and also have a rich social fabric. They sound like social works. You can feel there are a lot of people involved in the music and the richness of the social fabric enhances the music.”

Borealis Conversations

Sámi Experimentalism

In the first of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Borealis joins forces with the Sámi ritmmat / Samiske rytmer podcast host, drummer and researcher Jakop Janssønn to ask how do we categorise Sámi experimental music? Together with festival artist Ánndaris Rimpi and Musicologist Ellen Marie Bråthen Steen, they cast an eye over the past and future of Sámi sonic experimentalism to ask what is Sámi music without yoik and Sámi text: Is it gender based? Is it based on collective memory? Is it in our blood or is it in our nature? From where do we understand the secret knowledge of the Sámi culture?

Sámi Listening

In the second of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Borealis Artist in Residence Elina Waage Mikalsen is joined by Sámi scholar, duojár, writer, curator and editor Liisa-Rávná Finbog and musician and poet Jalvvi Niillas Holmberg to discuss Sami listening practices. As Sámi cultural practitioners from different backgrounds they unpack how listening is rooted within Sámi ways of thinking being and doing, and how this informs sound and musical practices. What role does listening play within colonial histories of language erasure, and how have policies of Norwegianisation affected the Sámi people’s own ability to listen. Today in 2024, with ongoing colonial violations of Sámi land what does it means when the Norwegian government doesn’t listen to its own supreme court?

Reinventing Joik

In the third of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Sámi experimental musician and joiker Viktor Bomstad is joined by fellow joikers, including Johan Sara Jr. to discuss how joik can and can’t be reinvented today. They consider how the joik has evolved and can be the basis for improvisation, exploring the tension between the need to hold and preserve tradition, whilst at the same time making space for new expressions that create new perspectives within Sámi communities. As a key signifier of Sámi cultural heritage, practice and belonging, what are the risks that experimentation brings and are they worth it?

Listen to all mixes on the website of Vers Libre here.

Joining forces to delve deeper experimental music and sound at Borealis 2024 festival, Vers Libre presents a series of specially curated mixes from festival artists, breakfast shows with live guests during the festival and a series of conversations on Sámi listening practices, cultural erasure and the complexity of experimenting with tradition.

All podcasts, talks and mixes are available for listening back here.

Signe Emmeluth
First up, Signe Emmeluth presents a music session, which, in the artist’s own words, “inspires me, tickles my dancing bones, and just makes sense to me”. Musician and composer, Signe Emmeluth has selected an hour of mix to kick off our collaborative programme with Borealis Festival for 2024.

Elina Waage Mikalsen
Elina Waage Mikalsen is a guest artist and co-curator of this year’s festival programme. Elina has put together a one hour taster of Sámi experimentalism in sound featuring artists that will be performing at Borealis as well as archival joiks, personal favourites and a classic from Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. Elina Waage Mikalsen will be performing “Stáinnarbánit (Wolffish Teeth)” at Bergen Kjøtt on 14.03.24.

Viktor Bomstad
Viktor Bomstad is an experimental guitarist and joiker. About the mix, Viktor says: “The mixtape consist of music that has inspired me in one way or another over the last years. I have included traditional joik that has inspired me as a joiker, and also music that inspired me as an instrumentalist and improviser.”

Viktor Bomstad
Viktor Bomstad will perform his commissioned piece Mosku for a swimming audience at Nordnes Sjøbad on 17.03.24. Expect desolate landscapes, feverish meditations on noisy themes sprinkled with the occasional glimmers of hope!

Kim Myhr
Composer and 12-string virtouso Kim Myhr opens the Borealis Festival 2024 with his commission Celeste – a piece for 12-string guitars that will be performed by 50 hands strumming 600 strings. His Borealis mix reflects this social element to music.

About the mix he says: “A lot of the tracks on the playlist are quite rich in their materiality and sound, and also have a rich social fabric. They sound like social works. You can feel there are a lot of people involved in the music and the richness of the social fabric enhances the music.”

 

Borealis Conversations

Sámi Experimentalism

In the first of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Borealis joins forces with the Sámi ritmmat / Samiske rytmer podcast host, drummer and researcher Jakop Janssønn to ask how do we categorise Sámi experimental music? Together with festival artist Ánndaris Rimpi and Musicologist Ellen Marie Bråthen Steen, they cast an eye over the past and future of Sámi sonic experimentalism to ask what is Sámi music without yoik and Sámi text: Is it gender based? Is it based on collective memory? Is it in our blood or is it in our nature? From where do we understand the secret knowledge of the Sámi culture?

Sámi Listening

In the second of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Borealis Artist in Residence Elina Waage Mikalsen is joined by Sámi scholar, duojár, writer, curator and editor Liisa-Rávná Finbog and musician and poet Jalvvi Niillas Holmberg to discuss Sami listening practices. As Sámi cultural practitioners from different backgrounds they unpack how listening is rooted within Sámi ways of thinking being and doing, and how this informs sound and musical practices. What role does listening play within colonial histories of language erasure, and how have policies of Norwegianisation affected the Sámi people’s own ability to listen. Today in 2024, with ongoing colonial violations of Sámi land what does it means when the Norwegian government doesn’t listen to its own supreme court?

Reinventing Joik

In the third of three talks exploring elements of indigenous Sámi listening cultures, Sámi experimental musician and joiker Viktor Bomstad is joined by fellow joikers, including Johan Sara Jr. to discuss how joik can and can’t be reinvented today. They consider how the joik has evolved and can be the basis for improvisation, exploring the tension between the need to hold and preserve tradition, whilst at the same time making space for new expressions that create new perspectives within Sámi communities. As a key signifier of Sámi cultural heritage, practice and belonging, what are the risks that experimentation brings and are they worth it?

Listen to all mixes on the website of Vers Libre here.