Mari Boine
| Mari Boine | |
|---|---|
Mari Boine performing at Riddu Riđđu 2006
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Mari Boine Olsen |
| Born |
8 November 1956 Karasjok, Finnmark, Norway |
| Origin | Sapmi, Norway |
| Genres | Yoik, Folk rock, jazz, rock |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, record producer |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Labels | Real World |
| Website | www |
Mari Boine, previously known as Mari Boine Persen, née Mari Boine Olsen (born 8 November 1956) is a Norwegian Sami musician known for having added jazz and rock to the yoiks of her native people. Gula Gula (first released by Iđut, 1989, later re-released by Real World) was her breakthrough release, and she continued to record popular albums throughout the 1990s. In 2008, she was appointed Professor of musicology at Nesna University College.
Boine was born and raised in Gámehisnjárga, a village on the river Anarjohka in Karasjok municipality in Finnmark, in the far north of Norway.
Boine's parents were Sami. They made a living from salmon fishing and farming. She grew up steeped in the region's natural environment, but also amidst the strict Laestadian Christian movement with discrimination against her people: for example, singing in the traditional Sami joik style was considered 'the devil's work'. The local school that Boine attended reflected a very different world from her family's. All the teaching was in Norwegian.
As Boine grew up, she started to rebel against the prejudiced attitude of being an inferior "Lappish" woman in Norwegian society. For instance, the booklet accompanying the CD 'Leahkastin' (Unfolding) is illustrated with photographs with racist captions like "Lapps report for anthropological measurement", "Typical female Lapp", "A well-nourished Lapp"; and it ends with a photo of Boine herself as a girl, captioned "Mari, one of the rugged Lapp-girl types" and attributed "(Photo: Unidentified priest)".
When Boine's album Gula Gula was first released on Peter Gabriel's RealWorld label in July 1990, its front cover (see illustration) showed an iconic image of the tundra of the far north, the eye of a snowy owl. The front cover curiously did not show the name of the album, or the name or face of Mari Boine herself; the back cover printed the name 'Mari Boine Persen', the Persen surname identifying her as a Norwegian rather than a Sami. On the 2007 release on her own Lean label, the album cover explicitly names Mari Boine with her Sami surname, and shows her (see illustration) in full Sami costume as a shamanistic dancer of her own people, while the white background, like the snowy owl of the original release, hints at the snows of the north.
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