Mari Boine - The Shadow

Mari Boine, previously known as Mari Boine Persen, (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. Boine was born and raised in Gámehisnjárga, a village on the river Anarjohka in Karasjok municipality in Finnmark, in the far north of Norway. Her parents were Sami (Lapps). 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 she attended reflected a very different world from her family’s. All the teaching was in Norwegian.