A new project from BICEP gives voice to Indigenous musicians from the Arctic

Fronted by the Northern Irish dance music duo, TAKKUUK is an audiovisual collaboration that celebrates Indigenous Arctic culture while confronting the challenges posed by climate change and global pressures.

In the nine Sámi languages that are spoken today, there are over a hundred different words to describe snow. Some researchers have estimated that there may be closer to 300. In Northern Sámi – the most spoken of the languages – there’s åppås for untouched winter snow, slievar for light snow and simply muohta for the general description of the form of precipitation.

Historically, this rich vocabulary has been a necessary function for the safety of the Sámi people, and the animals they live and work alongside. Fresh winter snow that is dry and weightless is called habllek. In swirling conditions, it can be dangerous to reindeer, as they may inhale it while running, which can cause them to suffocate. Within these words is contained thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge about the land their speakers lived in and co-existed with.

“You can describe how everything is in nature or the weather that day,” explains singer and composer Katarina Barruk, who blends Indigenous joik – a form of spiritual song and chant that often mimics the sounds of nature – into dreamy, future-facing pop tracks, and sings entirely in the Ume Sámi language. “We fight every day to keep the language and the culture alive – it is an ongoing fight.”

Barruk grew up in Västerbotten, one of the two northernmost counties of Sweden, where the Ume Sámi language is still spoken. Umé Sami is on UNESCO’s Red List of critically endangered languages, with commonly cited estimates suggesting only around 20 speakers. However, Barruk says the reality is more complicated. “It’s always some numbers that someone finds on the internet, but there hasn’t been any research made on it, so it can’t be stated as a fact,” she says. “It’s hard to define what is a language carrier, and we are definitely more than 20 people.”

The people of the Sápmi region – home to the Sámi people of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia – and other Indigenous communities that populate the Arctic, are commonly misunderstood, misrepresented and stereotyped. Derogatory labels such as ‘Eskimos’ and ‘Laplanders’ have been imposed upon them over the past few centuries by outsider colonisers, while oversimplified media representations have portrayed them as a monoculture – despite the region’s diversity of lifestyles, languages and cultural practices.

It’s exactly these misconceptions that a new touring audio-visual installation, TAKKUUK, aims to challenge. Fronted by BICEP, visual artist Zak Norman and filmmaker Charlie Miller, the project – which has its world premiere at London’s Outernet in July – sees the electronic music duo collaborating with seven Indigenous artists from the Arctic, spotlighting their individual and community stories alongside immersive visuals.

As well as Barruk, the project features Greenlandic electronic producer Andachan, Sebastian Enequist from Greenlandic death metal band Sound of the Damned, Greenlandic rapper Tarrak, Greenlandic indie band NUIJA, Norwegian Sámi electronic producer Niilas, and Canadian Inuit throat-singing duo Silla. Sonically, it’s a showcase of the uniquely boundless creativity coming out of the Arctic – from the ramped-up, off-beat techno of the project’s title track Takkuuk, which features Silla’s throat vocals chopped and sampled for use as a rhythmic tool, to the haunting, beatless collaboration with Katarina Barruk, Dárbbuo.

Within the project’s synthesised and electronic production, a sense of nature is conveyed through warm, organic textures – a key thread connecting much of the artists’ work here. There are also plentiful nods to traditional folk musics indigenous to the region. Alongside Barruk, producer Niilas is another artist who incorporates joik in his music, sampling the late Sámi music figurehead Nils-Aslak Valkeapää in his track Driving to Gárasavvon.

“That specific track is based on a drive from the Norwegian to the Finnish side of the border,” he explains. “It’s a pan-Sámi Indigenous area where they traditionally move reindeer between seasons.” It’s a more downtempo track than most of his discography, challenging dance music’s conventional formulas. But unlike the cold, industrial glint of techno, the steely futurism of electro or even the haunted negative space of dubstep – all genres born from the concrete expanses and alienation of the city – Niilas’ dance tracks capture a feeling of the sublime: all open landscapes and endless skies. Growing up between Bergen and Tromsø in the Sápmi region, Niilas’ productions, at their heart, celebrate the nature that has shaped his identity – nature that is increasingly under threat as the climate crisis intensifies. “One of the big issues for the Sámi community, and specifically reindeer herding, is that the winter has become both more extreme and colder, but also shorter at the same time,” he says. “So the snow disappears, then it rains, which freezes to ice on top of the vegetation that the reindeer are supposed to eat. Now the community must manually feed the animals instead of just letting them graze.”

 

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The initial idea for TAKKUUK came about in 2023, when BICEP were invited by the charity In Place of War to travel to Sisimiut in Greenland, where the duo had the opportunity to watch live performances at Arctic Sounds Festival – a four-day event spotlighting music from the Arctic region. “Over the two-week trip, we got to meet with locals who were so welcoming and very open about talking about what is close to their heart and what is threatening their existence,” says Andy Ferguson, one half of BICEP. “The very obvious and initial impression of Greenland was a landscape that was truly beautiful, yet visibly under threat from climate change.”

Situated in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, Greenland is the world’s largest island, with approximately 80 percent of its surface covered by ice. But situated at the Earth’s extremities, it is at the spear tip of climate change, with an estimated 11,000 square miles of its ice sheet having melted over the past 30 years.

At Arctic Sounds, one Greenlandic rapper on home turf stood out in particular. “One of the artists that really drew us to the project was Tarrak,” Ferguson continues. “There was a power and energy in his voice that resonated in a pure, punk, nonconformist way.”

Tarrak – who raps exclusively in his mother tongue, Kalaallisut, and calls out colonialism in his lyrics – grew up “all over the place” in Greenland and has seen firsthand how climate change is affecting life on the island. As last winter was due to set in, the community of Qaanaaq – one of the northernmost towns in the world – was forced to wait longer than usual for the ice to form, which meant a longer wait before hunting could begin. Longstanding rhythms have been disrupted, and people are having to search for new ways to survive in already harsh conditions.

And with the ice sheet melting, global powers have turned their attention toward the island, for what might lie below. Beyond its strategic location – situated between North America and northern Europe – geologists believe Greenland holds rare earth minerals like lithium and titanium beneath its surface. In his first presidency, Donald Trump proposed purchasing Greenland from Denmark, and now in his second term, he has intensified his rhetoric, saying: “One way or the other we’re going to get it.”

In Greenland itself, his statements were viewed with first bemusement, then alarm. “I took it as a joke back then; I didn’t take it seriously,” Tarrak says. “But when he persisted, it felt so weird. I went back to the capital, Nuuk, and you could feel it in the air. There were camera crews and journalists – it was unsettling.”

But whatever happens, Tarrak is certain that Greenlanders will be able to work through it. Their long history is one of resilience and adaptability, as outsiders have sought to exert influence over them. “When the Danish came, when they colonised us, they wanted us to be whale hunters – so we were whale hunters,” Tarrak says. “But then whale blubber wasn’t profitable, so they changed it to fur, and after that died out, it became fishing. So now we’re a fishing country.

“We are really used to how people change us,” he continues. “Maybe in the future they’re going to try and change us to be mineral miners. But this time, we know their language – we know your language.”