Sume - Forventning / Ankomst

Greenland is perhaps one of the last countries whose music I expected to write about on this blog. But, as so often happens with my research and curation for Dig That Treasure!, I've surprised myself again. Trawling the web I stumbled upon Sume, a band whose initial attraction to me was largely based on the fact that they come from the musically curious island of Greenland. However, that's not the say the appeal ended there. An amply-political band with lyrics critical of Denmark's colonial power, the cover to Sume's debut record Sumut depicts the rather magnificent image of an Inuit hunter killing a Dane. Somewhat conflictingly, the band actually recorded Sumut in Copenhagen, but we needn't hesitate over that. The album, seminal in Greenland, was purportedly bought by 20% of the country's population. Impressive? If you consider that 20% of Greenland's population at the time of the record's release in 1973 only equalled a figure of around 10,000 people, everything begins to come into perspective. But you get the significance. And the music? Oh yeah, the music is great. Sume took influence from the progressive rock and hard rock of the United States and weaved that together with Greenlandic vocals and freewheelin' horns. In an upbeat quasi-indie pop track like Forventning/Ankomst, Greenlandic sounds like Welsh and, well, the whole production sounds like Gorky's Zygotic Mynki. Never a bad thing; Gorky's reign supreme as the best Welsh band of all time, a country that appears, like Greenland, invariably wet, cold and dour.

Label: Demos (DK)
Year: 1973
Genre: Folk Rock, Indie Pop, Progressive Rock