Holding on to a language
I wrote “Not Gone” around two vocal lines: one feeling the language slip away, one refusing to let it disappear.
“I can feel it slipping away.”
And at the end:
“Not gone. Not yet.”
Both lines are about language.
This music project had been lying around on my computer for a long time. I do not remember exactly when I first made it, but I remember the feeling behind it clearly.
I grew up in a part of Sápmi where Sámi is not something you hear every day. That changes the relationship you have to the language. It becomes something you have to hold on to actively. Something you have to make space for, again and again, even when ordinary life is already full.
When I was younger, I could feel it slipping away from me.
That is the first line.
It was not dramatic in one single moment. It was more like noticing a distance growing. Not having enough words. Not using the language enough. Knowing that it belongs to you, while also feeling that you are losing parts of it.
The second line is the answer.
Not gone.
There is sadness in that, of course. But there is also stubbornness. The language is still there. In family. In memory. In the people who kept speaking it. In the people learning it again now.
For many Sámi families, the Norwegianization process is not distant history. It is part of family history. It is present in what people were allowed to speak at school, what became difficult to pass on, and why some of us have had to find our way back to the language later.
I am lucky to have family members who kept the language through times when that was hard. People who carried pride around it, even when there was shame and pressure connected to speaking Sámi. That matters a lot to me.
It also gives me a responsibility.
I want to pass something on to my own children. I do not want the language to become something I only speak about as loss, or as something that used to be there. I want it to be present in my life. In my home. In the way my children understand where they come from.
That is part of why I keep studying North Sámi.
I have taken courses for several years in my spare time. The last two years I completed two exams, which I am proud of. Now I am doing a more in-depth course, with weekly teaching and self-study outside the lessons.
It takes a lot of time beside work, friends, music and everything else. Some weeks I manage it well. Other weeks it is harder. But I know how quickly the language can start moving away again if I stop paying attention to it.
That feeling is inside the track.
Musically, Not Gone is a house track. With piano house stabs, organ sounds and a strong pulse. I wanted it to have weight, but also movement. The track is not only about losing something. It is also about refusing to let it disappear.
The vocal is sparse because I did not want to explain everything with lyrics. Those two phrases were enough. The rest of the message sits in the arrangement.
I often express myself through the beat construction. In this track, the drums, the pulse and the house elements carry a lot of the resilience. The music keeps moving forward. It has pressure in it. It has force.
The first line opens the feeling.
“I can feel it slipping away.”
The ending refuses to leave it there.
“Not gone. Not yet.”
For me, language is one of the most important parts of culture. Maybe the most important. It carries ways of thinking, family history, humour, place, small expressions, and a connection to something much larger than yourself.
Learning it now is also a way of pushing back.
I do not want Norwegianization to decide what my relationship with the language becomes. I do not want it to end with what was taken, weakened or made difficult. Taking the language back, even slowly and imperfectly, is part of refusing that ending.
Maybe that is why Not Gone had to be a club track for me.
It is a house track with two vocal lines and a lot of force around them. The language is slipping away, and the track answers by moving. The fear is there from the first phrase. The answer comes at the end.
