Variazioni sul vento. Storie di ascolto ed ecologie musicali dai territori indigeni dell’artico europeo

Among the Sámi Indigenous peoples that inhabit the circumpolar region of Scandinavia, Finland and northwest Russia, joiking is a sonic expression aimed at evoking specific persons, animals, places and features of the landscape. In ethnographic literature, the early understanding of joiking has been that of a cultural practice exclusive to humans whereas, according to past and present Sámi ontologies, both humans and other-than-human entities have agency in joiking. In fact, the origin myths of joiking are regularly associated with aural experiences of the landscape and, specifically, of the wind (biegga). The significant role of biegga in Sámi landscape practices has frequently been noted, but no specific attention has been paid yet to its acoustemologies among the Sámi and their impact on Indigenous music-making. To bridge this gap, the paper aims at tracing Sámi histories of listening-with-the-wind in settler and fieldwork accounts, in the joiking tradition, as well as in contemporary indigenous arts. Taking on joiks of the wind and field recordings as specific case studies, it also examines how joik as relational sonic act can be studied as Indigenous acoustemology and how listening to joiking – in the same way as listening to the environment – can lead to a better understanding of the world and its transformations.