Áilu&Aleksi, Ánar (Sápmi / Northern Finland - SA/NF)
Áilu Valle is the great rap artist from Anár / Inari, Finnish side of Sápmi, who raps in Northern Sámi, Finnish and English. He has released three solo albums in Northern Sámi, and won the Finnish State Culture Prize in 2019. Valle is currently working on a collab album with AMOC, who raps in Anár Sámi language. He also works as a Northern Sámi actor, interpreter, journalist and teacher.
For Pan-ArcticVision, Áilu Valle has teamed up with juggler Aleksi Niittyvuopio who can make anything fly through the air in poetic yet extremely impressive movements. Together, this power duo is ready to lift us to the stars!
We saw Áilu&Aleksi on stage for the first time at Arctic Arts Summit in Whitehorse last June, and the great Hiljaisuus-festivaali is helping us bringing them to Pan-Arctic Vision. Thank you!!!
Katia Gilman / Катерина Гильман (Russian Arctic Exile - RAX)
We are VERY excited to also include a participant from the Russian part of the Arctic! Katia Gilman is an up-and-coming young singer from the Russian Arctic who for the moment is living in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Apart from being a frequent headliner of local jazz and independent music venues in St. Petersburg, she worked with a number of European and Ukrainian producers (Ivan Dorn «Masterskaya»). While younger, Katia performed in song festivals in Belorussia, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland. Later on she focused on her own songwriting career in genres of indie, pop and - specifically - jazz and folk, where she really stands out. Her song for Pan-ArcticVision is called ´Please forgive me´.
Thanks to our great partner Pikene på Broen for still doing border-crossing work and for being our bridge to the Russian artistic community. And thanks to BarentsKult for financing this important contact!
Byron Nicholai, Toksook Bay (Alaska, USA - AK)
Byron Nicholai grew up in Toksook Bay on the far west coast of Alaska, on the brink of the Bering Sea. In 2014, Nicholai started uploading videos singing in his Indigenous Yup'ik language on social media. One video in particular went viral, deeming some media to dub him the "Justin Bieber of Alaska". In 2015, Byron Nicholai performed for United States Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington, D.C. at the Arctic Council.
Byron is a long term friend and collaborator of Anchorage Museum, the Alaska partner who helped us find this brilliant participant from the other side of the North. We are looking so much forward to Byron Nicholai´s magical fusion of tradition and contemporary beats!
The Sweeties, Whitehorse - (Yukon, Canada - YU)
The Sweeties from Whitehorse in Canada is our next Pan-Arctic Vision participant! This great duo with Fiona McTaggert and Patric Hamilton is nothing less than beautiful arctic energy, or "doom band" as they label themselves: Drums & guitars are all you need! The Sweeties are joining us from Yukon, where our producer Inger-Marie A. Lupton heard them live a late winter night.
When not playing the drums, Fiona is running her own Sourdoughnuts-shop in Whitehorse. This is indeed another interesting northern territory; not the costal north that we are used to from Vadsø/Norway, but a fabulous inland of rivers, mountains, First nations, Inuits, settlers, salmon and caribou that the rest of the Arctic have lots to learn from (the whole team from Nordting got to visit Whitehorse during last years Arctic Arts Summit, brought together by Canada Council for the Arts.
We are so happy to cooperate with The Yukon Arts Centre and Music Yukon in finding The Sweeties, and in the task of hosting a pyjamas streaming event in downtown Whitehorse on the early morning of August 12 (local time). It´s gonna be great!
Nuija, Nuuk (Kalaallitt Nunaat (Greenland) - GL)
What a perfect day to launch our participant from Greenland / Kalaallit Nunaat! Today (21.06.2023) is the national day of this uniq Arctic people (who still for some reason is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark...)
NUIJA is based in Nuuk and is playing indierock with Greenlandic lyrics. The band has six members, a truly Arctic mix from both Greenland, Denmark and Iceland. As travel is complicated and expensive in the North, unfortunately only three of them will be with us live on stage in Vadsø; Magnus Biilmann Trolle, Lona Platoú and Nick Ørbæk . We are truly looking forward to the energy and poetry of this new voice from the music scene of the North. NUIJA is an East Greenlandic word for "cloud", and were chosen for Pan-Arctic Vision by a local jury after an open call arranged in cooperation with our great partner Katuaq Kulturip Illorsua (the main culture centre of Nuuk), and event manager Jakob Søvndahl Skovaa.
Congratulations to Kalaallit Nunaat and to NUIJA! We are happy to have you onboard!
Drengurinn Fengurinn, Akureyri (Norðurland, Island - NL)
Dregurinn Fengurinn! What can we possibly say about this one-of-a-kind masked artist from the North side of Iceland? He has a funny face, he is probably the most productive musician in Iceland, and he writes songs about where he is and what he does - so for Pan-Arctic Vision live on stage in Vadsø we will probably hear a brand new song about being part of the Pan-ArcticVision live on stage in Vadsø…!
Drengurinn Fengurinn - aka Egill Jónasson - is a native of Akureyri, the largest city of Iceland outside of the capital region. One might think that Iceland is uniq in the Arctic, being independent with its capital located in the North. But also Iceland has a region north of the capital, and that´s where Akureyri is located. And just like in many other places up north: Seen from Akureyri, the capital - and the power and the money - is often very far away down south.
At least Akureyri has lots of tourists, lots of fisheries and a great performance festival called A - Gjörningahátíð.
Guðrið Hánsdottir, Velbastaður (Føroyar - FO)
Pan-ArcticVision is extremely proud to present Guðrið Hansdóttir from Velbastaður and the Faroe Islands! Guðrið was chosen for Pan-ArcticVision after an open call among Faroese musicians in cooperation with Norðurlandahúsið í Føroyum - The Nordic House in The Faroe Islands.
The Faroese singer and songwriter Guðrið Hansdóttir is a big name in the Faroe Islands and also active on the international music scene. Six solo albums have been released, the latest of which won the award for album of the year at the Faroese Music Awards - FMA 2023. Guðrið is also a member of the vocal quintet KATA and the electropop duo BYRTA. Her music mixes genres such as pop/folk and minimalist electronic music, and she draws inspiration from, among other things in Nordic pop and American folk.
Guðrið takes the stage at Pan-ArcticVision with a song written by herself and Faroese writer Lív Maria Róadóttir Jæger (lyrics). The strong interplay between music and text, which is in Faroese, was something the jury noticed in their selection. The Faroese jury consisted of: Glenn Larsen: head of FMX Faroe Music Export, Jasmin Mote: musician (stage name: Jazzygold) and Eyðfinn Jensen: Head of Music at Kringvarp Føroya/ The Faroese Broadcasting Corp.
MÁ, Olmmáivággi / Tromsø (Sápmi / Troms - SA/TO)
The Arctic is, like of the rest of the world, divided into nation states. It hasn´t always been like that. Marita Isobel Solberg is one of many Arctic people defying borders; growing up in Olmmáivággi, living in Tromsø, with family on all sides of many borders, she is Sámi, she is Kven, she is Norwegian, she does music, she does performance, she does fine arts... Marita is truly an Arctic artist.
The result of these border crossing exercises is her own very unique expression, often including the use of voice and lots of wool. She comes to Pan-Arctic Vision as MÁ, a duo formed with long term collaborator Risto Puurunen from Joutsa (Finland), know for many things, for example the highly experimental music collective Cleaning Women. We are so ready for this borderless arctic beauty!
Sköll, Båtsfjord (Finnmark, Norway - FM)
Get ready for the youngest and hardest participant of the Pan-ArcticVision: SKÖLL is hard punk with a hint of rock, four musicians aged 15-19 from the small community of Båtsfjord at the coast of Finnmark in Northern Norway: Rudi Garstad, Chris Emil Utne, Kamila Sandulskyte and Remy Christer Wærnes.
The home of Sköll, Båtsfjord, is considered to be the ´fishing capital´ of Norway. The whole coastline of communities in this part of the world is build on fisheries. Since the fish is the gold of the north, there is a constant conflict over the right to fish. Originally, this right of course belonged to the people living in the communities, but as modern industrialization hit, also the right to fish became an asset you could sell, buy and own. It didn´t take long before the right to fish in the rich waters off the coast of Northern Norway ended up in the pockets of investors in the south. And that battle is not yet over. There are plenty of things to be mad about, also in the North.
In Norse mythology, Sköll is the wolf that chases the sun across the sky. When Sköll eventually catches up and devours the celestial being, our world has come to its end…
Sköll joins us in cooperation with Scene Finnmark.
