Katarina Barruk asks listeners to set aside assumptions about language and simply feel. From Lusspie (Storuman) in northern Sweden, she performs in Umé Sámi, a dialect spoken by fewer than 30 people and listed on UNESCO’s red list of critically endangered languages. Her music folds traditional joik—an a cappella Sámi vocal form—into contemporary arrangements, producing emotional expressions that often resist literal translation.
Lusspie, a place the size of Delaware, carries deep cultural weight for Barruk. For her, joik is a foundational carrier of knowledge: not a narrative about something, but a way of being with and honoring people, landscapes and memories through improvisational voice. Her acoustic single ‘Dárbasjub Duv’ captures that intimate, pared-back style, while her broader catalogue pushes joik into new territories.
Barruk has taken that voice onto international stages: Iceland Airwaves, the Royal Albert Hall, Roskilde, Reeperbahn and Øyafestivalen. She has also lent her vocals to contemporary art projects, including the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea and Máret Ánne Sara’s ‘Goavve-Geabbil’ at Tate Modern. Those collaborations have helped open a window to the wider Sámi community, which stretches across Sápmi—the northern reaches of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia’s Kola Peninsula—and includes traditions such as reindeer herding tied to seasonal migration.
Umé Sámi, however, is among the least spoken of the Sámi languages. Barruk grew up in an activist household: her father taught, researched and worked to revitalize Umé Sámi, compiling the dialect’s dictionary. For her, holding that book in 2018 was a defining moment; seeing familiar words collected in one place moved her to tears and reinforced the urgency of language preservation.
That urgency informs her artistic choices. Watching elder speakers pass away made clear how fragile the language had become, and Barruk decided to carry it forward through song. Singing in Umé Sámi has meant repeatedly explaining and justifying the language to others, but she sees that effort as necessary. She also values words that capture the Indigenous Sámi worldview—terms and concepts that resist neat translation—and notes that some of the earliest Sámi printed works, dating back to the 1600s, were in Umé.
Musically, Barruk is deliberate about bringing joik into the present. She blends traditional vocal techniques with electronic and instrumental textures, demonstrating that joik can coexist with modern production. Collaborations such as ‘Darbbuo’ with electronic duo BICEP show this balance: the traditional voice sits naturally alongside synthesized sound. Much of her creative process is rooted in place; she prefers to return home when beginning new work because the landscape and community feed the songs. She resists rushing pieces out to meet tour schedules, insisting each composition deserves time to breathe.
Barruk sings only in Umé Sámi by design. That choice is both artistic and political: she wants to push back against efforts that would make the language seem smaller and to reveal the depth it brings to her music. Her work is a living act of preservation—an assertion that, despite centuries of pressure, Umé Sámi survives and continues to be spoken, honored and renewed through voice and song.