The Alta River in fog, with the project logo inlaid in the top left corner. The logo consists of the text "The Singing Map" and a stylized mountain and sun.

Singing maps: developing online music communities to support Sámi adolescent cultural resilience

Singing Maps aims to build knowledge of traditional learning practices to support broader participation of Sámi adolescents in musical heritage.

Sámi vocal traditions, among the oldest in Europe, have faced challenges due to historical suppression and marginalization by majority cultures in the Nordic region. Despite a resurgence in Sámi commercial music, traditional practices have become endangered, and are almost entirely absent from formal educational settings.

The Singing Maps project aims to strengthen and promote the traditional musical heritage of the Sámi people, focusing on joiking. By investigating issues such as cultural sustainability, Indigenous resilience, heritage ownership and musical identity, Singing Maps explores how joiking can be shared and passed down through modern educational platforms and online learning communities. It will develop new knowledge and learning resources specifically adapted to help Sámi adolescents connect with traditional music, supporting cultural resilience through music education. The Singing Maps project brings together Sámi tradition bearers, educators, and researchers from across the Nordic region to create a unique online platform that will serve as a living archive and learning hub for Sámi musical traditions. The platform will function as a digital community where learners can create content, connect with others, and access Sámi music from different regions.  

This project not only aims to strengthen endangered Sámi music but also strives to create ethical frameworks for sharing this heritage. By investigating traditional Sámi learning practices, the project seeks to understand how music has been taught across generations and how it can be shared responsibly with younger generations. This research will result in guidelines for sharing Indigenous musics developed through dialogue with Sámi tradition bearers. The research is supported by international collaboration with project partners in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Canada to place Sámi music in a global research perspective. 

What are we doing in Singing Maps?

Singing Maps seeks to investigate traditional music learning practices and evaluate advanced state-of-the-art networked learning tools to support the broader participation of adolescents in Sámi musical culture through music education. This project mobilizes institutional cooperation between higher education institutions across the Nordic region and internationally through the Singing Maps and the Decolonizing and Indigenizing Music Education (DIME) networks to investigate how Sámi musical culture can be sustained and responsibly shared through the development, implementation and evaluation of a unique living digital archive. The project has four core objectives: 

  1. Build knowledge of traditional learning practices and perspectives on sharing of cultural heritage among Sámi tradition bearers in Norway, Sweden, and Finland 
  2. Establish ethical standards and frameworks for responsible sharing of traditional music that positions the Sámi context in an international Indigenous comparative perspective
  3. Develop online music learning resources and practices collaboratively with tradition  bearers and their communities, and
  4. Evaluate the effectiveness of the dedicated online learning community platform to support Sámi adolescents’ cultural resilience through school music education 

The project is divided into three work packages (WP). 

Work package 1

Investigating intergenerational transmission of vocal traditions and adolescent rites of passage in Sámi musical practice among culture bearers in Norway, Sweden, and Finland

Research quetions:

  1.  In what ways have Sámi tradition bearers worked to support transmission of traditional knowledge and practice in music?
  2. In what ways can the rite of passage from learner to culture bearer be experienced and understood through contemporary artistic practice and artistic research? 
  3. In what ways can traditional singing and joiking learning practices be effectively and responsibly adapted to virtual online community learning? 

Ylva Hofvander Trulsson of Lund University is the leader of this work package.

In this work package, applied ethnomusicological and artistic research methods will be employed to investigate the ways in which tradition bearers within Sámi vocal music traditions have contributed to cultural resilience across the past 80 years. 

Research question 1 concerning learning practices is many-sided and has several subquestions, including a) what characterizes Sámi learning practices in joiking in different generations? b) how gender roles are defined, enacted and challenged within Sámi vocal music learning and performance practices? c) how rites of passage from learner to tradition bearer in Sámi vocal traditions are framed and experienced by young men and women?, and d) which aspects of these learning practices may be challenging in formal music education and virtual music education contexts?

Knowledge will be built collaboratively with tradition bearer-participants representing four generations of culturally resilient practices (generation 1: born before 1960; generation 2: born 1961-1981; generation 3: born 1982-2002; generation 4: born 2003- present). An understanding of the contemporary experience of learning traditional Sámi music as a rite of passage and experience of cultural identity will be developed through studying generations of tradition bearers. Learning practices and strategies will be investigated and collected in the form of video recordings of musical performances, storytelling, and tutorials. New knowledge will be developed to describe how experiences and perspectives of tradition bearers may vary according to generational, regional, stylistic and gender dimensions. These perspectives will serve as a basis for developing music education within Sámi traditions that engages adolescents in musical learning and cultural resilience. 

To accomplish this, we are performing the following tasks: 

  1. A thorough review of relevant ethnographic and ethnomusicological scholarship of the Sámi people and Sámi musical practices in Finland, Sweden, and Norway will be performed.
  2. Interviews, observational studies and video documentation of learning practices will be conducted with Sámi tradition bearers representing four generations.
  3. Autoethnographic artistic research will be performed by two doctoral students and three Master’s students representing three national contexts within Sápmi: Finland, Sweden, and Norway 

Work package 2

Investigating international ethical standards and practices in the development of Indigenous music education resources based on the Sámi context 

Research questions:

  1. What are the ethical standards and practices currently employed in research and development initiatives to ensure responsible and sustainable sharing of traditional music in diverse global Indigenous music education contexts?
  2. How are concepts such as indigeneity, decolonization, cultural identity and Indigenous resilience understood and manifested in four global Indigenous music education contexts? 

Professor David Hebert heads this work package.

In this WP, issues of Indigenous rights, ownership, copyright and ethnic and national identity as they pertain to music education will be defined within Sámi contexts and from an international perspective. Definitions and examples of decolonizing practices and cultural resilience in four Indigenous contexts will be compared, contrasted, and refined. The Canadian, Australian, and Aotearoa New Zealand contexts will be examined as useful examples of cases where development of Indigenous music education resources and community collaboration have recently been pursued through large-scale research and development projects. Digital solutions for cultural resilience in the four contexts will be a special focus. This will result in both recommendations and guidelines for the present study as well as two scientific articles based on WP findings.

To accomplish this, a group of co-researchers and international advisors assembled in the present proposal will: 

  1. Conduct a comparative systematic literature review focusing on Indigenous music education research initiatives from the past 20 years in the four international contexts.
  2. Hold four online seminars to compile and refine knowledge of Indigenous rights, ownership, copyright, decolonization theory, and ethnic and national identity as they pertain to music education. 

Work package 3

Implementation and Assessment of Singing Map platform as a learning tool 

  1. In what ways can online music learning resources be designed to engage Sámi adolescents?
  2. What intercultural and musical learning outcomes are associated with the use of dedicated virtual music community learning tools in formal music education? 

Work package leders: David Johnson and Annukka Hirvasvuopio.  

In this implementation stage, pilot-testing will measure the effectiveness of the Singing Map platform as a learning tool for singing, intercultural learning and cultural resilience in schools within Sápmi. 

Tasks:

  1. Develop a Singing Map learning module in Sámi vocal music for use in Nordic schools
  2. Conduct focus group testing of Singing Map with Sámi youth
  3. Conduct questionnaire survey evaluation of Singing Map effectiveness