Mari Boine

The Guardian, in its 2010 F&M playlist of songs "they just can't turn off", describes My Friend of Angel Tribe with the words "Norwegian Sami singer Boine, with this soft, melancholy and utterly mesmerising song."

In 2003, Boine was awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize. She was appointed knight, first class in the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav for her artistic diversity on 18 September 2009. On 7 October 2012, Boine was appointed as a "statsstipendiat", an artist with national funding, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon any artist in Norway.

Rootsworld, interviewing Boine in 2002, described her as "an unofficial Sami cultural ambassador".

Boine was asked to perform at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, but refused because she perceived the invitation as an attempt to bring a token minority to the ceremonies.

When Boine's album Gula Gula was first released on Peter Gabriel's RealWorld label in July 1990, its front cover (see illustration) showed an iconic image of the tundra of the far north, the eye of a snowy owl. The front cover curiously did not show the name of the album, or the name or face of Mari Boine herself; the back cover printed the name 'Mari Boine Persen', the Persen surname identifying her as a Norwegian rather than a Sami. On the 2007 release on her own Lean label, the album cover explicitly names Mari Boine with her Sami surname, and shows her (see illustration) in full Sami costume as a shamanistic dancer of her own people, while the white background, like the snowy owl of the original release, hints at the snows of the north.

Mari Boine (born Mari Boine Persen, 8 November 1956) is a Norwegian singer. She combined traditional yodeling folk music, or yoik, with rock. In 2008, she became a professor of musicology at Nesna University College.