Gula Gula

The Allmusic review awarded the album 5 stars.[3]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[3]

The album is rooted in Mari Boine's experience of being in a despised minority; the song "Oppskrift for Herrefolk" ("Recipe for a Master Race") is sung in Norwegian, unlike the rest of the songs which are in Sami. It speaks directly of "discrimination and hate", and recommends ways of oppressing a minority: "Use bible and booze and bayonet"; "Use articles of law against ancient rights".[4] Other songs tell of the beauty and wildness of Sapmi (Lapland). The title track asks the listener to remember "that the earth is our mother".[5] Boine described in an interview with Norwegian American how the songs came about:[6]

I became very angry to our repression, to the fact that we were told that there was something wrong with our language and our culture. And it resulted in a sort of a volcano, in an explosion of songs that just came to me.[6]

Boine sings in a traditional Sami style, using a "jojk" voice, with a range of accompanying instruments and percussion. The instruments used are drum, guitar, electric bass clarinet, dozo n'koni, ganga, claypot, darboka, tambourine, seed rattles, cymbal, clarinet, piano, frame drum, saz, drone drum, hammered dulcimer, bouzouki, overtone flute, bells, bass, quena, charango and antara.[7]

The musicologist Olle Edström called the album's lyrics "still highly political", but noted that the music had changed, with folk musicians from Sweden, Peru and elsewhere, making the album "World music", or more precisely in Edström's characterisation "a mixture of rock with quasi-West-African rhythms, with short phrases sung in a kind of Sami/Native North-American technique and with rather few harmonies or drone-like harmonies".[8] In his view, the musical forms are simple, with "the musicians playing 'ethnic' instruments such as the West African drums, Mbira, Greek Bouzouki etc".[8] He describes her singing style as "a special 'ethnic' voice technique of her own" that "reminds Samish listeners in part of traditional jojk technique and convinces European listeners that it is".[8]

Silje F. Erdal, for Norway's FolkMusikk organisation, described the album as Boine's breakthrough, especially when Peter Gabriel released it on his Real World label. She noted that it was commissioned for the Sami Theatre, and that the title song Gula Gula, with its call to "hear the voices of the tribal mothers" has an "obvious feminist message". It won a Norwegian Grammy award (Spellemanprisen) in 1989.[1]

Merlyn Driver, writing for Songlines thirty years after the album's release, comments that "If you’ve heard of just one Sámi musician, it's probably Mari Boine", and that her voice "a bewitching combination of melancholy, vulnerability and strength, has never sounded more impressive than on Gula Gula".[9]

The title song formed the first (instrumental) track of the Norwegian jazz musician Jan Garbarek's 1990 album I Took Up the Runes. The contemporary reviewer Jim Aikin called the track "especially memorable".[10]

All tracks are composed and performed by Mari Boine. All are in the Sami language, except as indicated.

1. "Gula Gula" (Hear the Voices of the Foremothers) - 03:40
2. "Vilges Suola" (White Thief) - 04:15
3. "Balu Badjel Go Vuoittán" (When I Win Against Fear) - 04:00
4. "Du Lahka" (Near You) - 05:14
5. "It Sat Duolmma Mu" (Free at Last) - 03:48
6. "Eadnán Bákti" (To Woman) - 03:17
7. "Oppskrift for Herrefolk" (Recipe for a Master Race) - 03:54 (in Norwegian)
8. "Duinne" (To You) - 06:27

Bonus tracks on 2000 CD:

1. "Oarbbis Leat" 05:31
2. "Čuovgi Liekkas" 04:11
3. "Gula Gula" Chilluminati mix 04:48

Mari Boine performing with a traditional drum in 2007

• Mari Boine - vocals, drum, guitar
• Eivind Aarset - guitar
• Christer Bo Bothen - electric bass clarinet, dozo n'koni, ganga
• Unni Shael Damslora - claypot, darboka, tambourine, seed rattles, cymbal
• Tellef Kvifte - clarinet, piano
• Roger Ludvigsen - guitar, breath, piano, frame drum, saz
• Ale Möller - drone drum, hammered dulcimer, bosoki, overtone flute
• Gjermund Silseth - bells, bass, piano
• Leiv Solberg - bass
• Carlos Zamata Quipse - quena, breath, charango, antara

• Official website – lyrics of all tracks in English, Sami, and Norwegian