What is it?
This is a thing about which I have been wondering ever since I first read the liner notes on a CD collection called Global Celebrations. The notes in question are about a group called Angelin Tytöt (The Girls of Angeli). They call themselves Angelit, now, but I’m still wondering.
Anyway, the girls of Angeli are from Inari, a Lapp village in Finland, and they sing a form of folk music called joikhing. The notes talk about a circular breathing technique similar to Eskimo songs.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Eskimos singing.
So, that’s another thing to wonder about.
But, I liked this particular song called Normu Jovna, and I wondered what circular breathing is. At the time, the internet had not amassed the vast stores of information (and captioned cat pictures) that it now has, so I didn’t find out much.
Today, I can read entries and view lessons on circular breathing—although they seem to be aimed at the players of woodwind instruments, so I don’t know if it’s the same idea for singers. I still wonder about that.
For the instrumentalists, it appears to be a technique whereby you store the last little bit of breath in your lungs in your cheeks and use your check muscles to push it out while you inhale more air through your nose. (If that sounds a bit like rubbing your stomach while patting your head, it’s because it probably is.)
The idea is you get air without interrupting the flow of the music.
I can see how this could be very useful, although I haven’t been able to master it.
(Master it? I haven’t been able to sneak up on it with training wheels.)
However it is done, the joikhing has a happy sound. Since I don’t speak Finnish or Sami or Lapp or whatever it is, I have no idea what any of it means. But I like the sound of it.
This clip has a big of Normu Jovna at the start of it. And if you do happen to speak Finnish or Sami or Lapp or whatever, maybe you will understand the interview that follows. If you don’t, it has a happy sound, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lmgAGSNS0
