Kalaallisut Nipilersuutit
Kalaallit Nunaat !
What a place. One thing to know about Greenland, is that despite the sheer size of it, we are talking about a really quite small population.
About 56 000 people live there. Add to that the estimated 20 000 Greenlandic diaspora - for the most part living in Denmark, due to the country's colonization.
For most regions in the World, that's the equivalent of a small town, not even what would be considered a city. But we are in a very special place in the World. A land that was relatively isolated from the rest of the World - even though the were not unaware of it, an trade occurred from time to time since the Old days, as evidenced by archaeologic research, but we're just digressing now.
What matters is that the Inuit - Kalaallit people living there developed a unique culture, and even between Greenlanders themselves dialects and cultural practices differ greatly, especially given the isolation of certain regions like for example the East coast.
This culture was threatened by the colonial power. Denmark came in the middle of the 17OO's, and established a colony on the entire territory of Greenland, colony that lasted officially until the middle of the 20th century. Just like in Sápmi, the ancestral & traditional playing of sacred drums was forbidden by the Danish authorities. This practice is slowly brought back to life by Greenlandic musicians and activists, especially on the East coast, since it's specific remoteness left it less influenced by outsiders.
The Greenlandic language, Kalaallisut, was also - and to an extent still is - threatened by the colonial fact. Many kids & teenagers were for generations forcibly taken out of Greenland to be put in a foster home in Denmark - where they were taught the Danish language, forbidden to speak Greenlandic. As a matter of fact, sadly, many Greenlanders or half-Greenlanders living in Denmark speak only little Greenlandic, when they can speak some.
All that to say, that the music found in Kalaallit Nunaat is something special, and has to be understood in this specific context. And with that, we can start.
It seems only appropriate to start by talking about a band called Sumé.
This Rock band would be the first one to write music in the Greenlandic language, in the 70's. They would write quite politically engaged texts, that contributed strongly to Greenlandic national identity, and apparently paved the way to social changes and evolution of the neocolonial status quo inherited from the 50's, that finally ended up with the Home Rule government in 1979. A documentary was made about the band by director Inuk Silis Høegh, produced by Ánorâk Film.
Funnily enough, going out in bars, seeing live music in Ilulissat & Sisimiut, young bands would play many songs from this band, and it would definitely be very popular : everyone would sing - many would dance -, but strangely enough, when asked about it, nobody would really know who wrote the songs in the first place. They seem now to only exist in the Greenlandic collective mind, in the ether. At least amongst the Friday night's bar population, those two evenings.
A popular band to also be covered in bars was Zikaza. A little bit at the intersection between a Reggae and classical Rock band, they just released a new album after a small (27 years) break. Quite good stuff !
Another person that should get mentioned here is Rasmus Lyberth, that durably marked Greenlandic music scene since the 70's with his ballads, that also already singed in Kalaallisut since the beginning.
Some of the most well known artists from Greenland probably include the Pop-Rock band Nanook, probably their most popular band in and out of the Island, as their Wikipedia remembers us they sold 5000 copies of one of their albums, representing a whole 10th of Greenlandic population (!), and touring the World at the same time. While they exclusively sing in Greenlandic, they're big enough that they added subtitles in some of their music videos. I guess that's interesting, if you're curious about what they are talking about. A little bit in the same style, we got recommended INUK.
Amongst bands that got a little international recognition - especially in Denmark -, you have Small Time Giants & Simon Lynge. Respectively Alt-Rock and Pop in style, they both have the particularity of writing mostly in English.
On a small footnote, by the way, many artists and bands we saw CDs of up here seem not to have the strongest presence on the internet. That's how it is. The internet came late to the country, for infrastructure reasons, and is still really quite expensive. Hopefully, more of the culture and music will be digitalized before it gets lost in time.
They also use Youtube a lot, many of the links we'll put here will just end up being Youtube videos. That creates a small problem for this project here : someone showed me for example this song - apparently quite known and liked (it was shown to us in a bar). But who made it ? Is the Youtube channel (Jooris Joorut) uploading it it's author ? Or are they just publishing it from someone else ? Maybe that's how songs end up existing in the ether.
It's not that bad nor that important, as long as people can find it whenever they want to. Just makes it a bit confusing for us, non-Greenlanders !
Now, we need to speak about the fantastic albums Rock from the Cold Seas & World Music from the Cold Seas, that we already spoke about in the article about Sámi music, published by the incredible Faroese label Tutl. They regroup music from... the Cold Seas - that is to say, Ísland, Føroyar, Sápmi & Kalaallit Nunaat.
In the wonderful albums (for real give it a try), we learned about Sumé, actually, but also about the Punk band Siissiisoq (a little something from the Suicidal Tendencies, right ?) and Piitsukkut, whose song "Seqineq" was definitely one of the super popular yet "who sings that?" type of songs.
The whole Rock album is amazing, and it starts to feel like we're copying the whole list of songs here, but "Inuusuttoq" from Inneruulat is also really good.
Actually, the World music album is also pretty good, even though Greenlandic songs are maybe not the ones that stand out the most...
That said, one of the songs on the album is an absolute BLAST called "The Drum", by an artist named "Nanu Disco", which - again - doesn't seem to have any internet presence appart from this absolute BANGER. There is a Soundcloud with a few of songs from their 1998 album but they claim the original is apparently lost. It's electronic music / house mixed with traditional songs, really quite special, and probably lost forever.
If anyone knows more about it p l e a s e write to us.
We discovered a Rock band, yes, another one, called HEJ. Maybe we can hear a little bit of influence from the psychedelic scene of the 70's ? Who knows, we are not musicians, just enjoying it.
When looking around in these heavier genres, even outside of the aforementioned "Rock from the Cold Seas", you find other bands - seems to be quite a thing in the North : Arctic Spirits, for example, or a band we discovered on a previous trip to Kalaallit Nunaat, the incredible Liima Inui. Truly impressive musically, probably closer to the Metal / Heavy part of the Rock spectrum than any other artists here, and what a voice ! A clear recommendation.
If you also want to try something else, there's the Greenlandic Reggae incredible band Sauwestari. Yes, Greenlandic Reggae.
Well there you go !
There was a few things to talk about, in the end, right ? And probably so much more we didn't get the chance to encounter...
Takuss, Kalaallit Nunaat. Qujanaq.