Music of Denmark
From Free net encyclopedia
Denmark is a Nordic country that has long been a center of cultural innovation. Its capital, Copenhagen, and its multiple outlying islands have a wide range of folk traditions, while an extensive recording industry has produced pop stars and a host of performers from a multitude of genres.
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Rock
The Danish bands that have had the most impact outside of Denmark itself, are pop group Aqua, who had a number of hits around Europe including "Barbie Girl" and "Doctor Jones" as part of the Europop scene. Another band popular outside of Denmark are rockers D-A-D (formerly Disneyland After Dark) who had a hit with "Sleeping My Day Away" in the early 1990s.
The current Danish rock scene is dominated by indie influences in bands such as garage rockers The Raveonettes, melodic Mew (band) and genre-defying Kashmir. Other popular Danish rock groups include Sort Sol (Black sun), Saybia, Kira and the Kindred Spirits, and Mercyful Fate.
Every year in the summer, the annual Roskilde Festival is held in Danish city Roskilde. The festival is the second-largest in Europe with ticket sales normally going in between 50,000 and 100,000. The festival has, over time, featured many prominent artists (mainly rock), such as Nirvana, Radiohead, Black Sabbath and Green Day, there has also been an emphasis on world music, alternative genres and Danish music at the festival. In 2000 the festival suffered a terrible accident during a Pearl Jam concert where 9 people were squashed to death by the wild crowds, making security a primary issue of the following festivals. There have been no further incidents of that kind in Roskilde.
Pop
The most famous Danish pop-artist through time is definetely Aqua, with their worldwide hits Barbie Girl, Doctor Jones etc. Other Danish exporting pop-artist in the last 10 years are: Infernal, Safri Duo & Outlandish.
Perhaps the most popular and longest-standing Danish musicians locally are Kim Larsen and Shu-Bi-Dua.
Denmark also participates in the annual Eurovision song contest, and holds its own Danish Melodi Grand Prix competition to select the song that will represent Denmark in the Eurovision contest. Denmark has won the Eurovision song contest twice: first with Grethe & Jørgen Ingmann's Dansevisenin 1963, and more recently with Brødrene Olsen's (Olsen Brothers) "Fly On The Wings Of Love" (from the Danish Smuk Som Et Stjerneskud, literally "Beautiful as a shooting star") in 2000.
Folk
Danish folk music has long been dominated by a fiddle and accordion duo, much like its northern neighbors in Scandinavia. An important difference, however, is that Danish fiddlers almost always play in groups, and so there is no tradition of virtuoso fiddle players capable of solo performance; Danish bands also tend to feature the guitar more prominently than the other Nordic countries, especially in recent years.
Fiddle and accordion duos play generally rhythmic dance music, local versions of the Nordic folk dance music. The oldest variety is called pols, and it is now mostly found on Fanø and includes even smaller variety likes sønderhoning from Sønderho. Sønderho has produced a family of widely-respected musicians in Søren Lassen Brinch and his descendents. Another dance from Fanø is called fanik, while Danish dance music included its own versions of polka, waltz, schottisch, trekanter, firtur, tretur and rheinlænder, displaying its multicultural influences from Germany, Poland, Austria, Bohemia, Sweden, England and Norway.
The first Danish popular songs were printed ballads called skillingstryk, which grew popular in the 16th century. In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of roots revivals swept across Europe and soon mixed with American rock 'n' roll, blues and jazz to make new forms of popular music. Denmark remained largely unaffected by this trend, which hit all of its neighbors, including Finland, Sweden, Norway and Germany. Instead, Denmark hosted numerous music festivals celebrating Scottish, Irish and American folk musicians. Danish folk music was still alive, though, recorded by folklorists like Thorkild Knudsen. Knudsen's most important find was Himmerland fiddler Evald Thomsen. The oldest known Danish folk melody is entitled Drømte mig en drøm (lit. "Dreamt a dream"), and dates from the 14th century.
The Danish new folk scene didn't become mainstream until the 1990s. The biggest catalyst for this change was the founding of several organizations to promote folk music, the most important of which was the Danish Folk Council. Performers of regional styles include Fanø's Jæ' Sweevers and East Jutland's Mølposen and Rasmus. Other influential musicians who play a multitude of styles include fiddler Michael Sommer, Benny Andersen, Erik Grip, Phønix, Baltinget, Danish Dia Delight, Carl Erik Lundgaard, Povl Dissing and perhaps the biggest star of the Danish roots revival, Morten Alfred Høirup.
See also
| Nordic music |
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Denmark - Faroe Islands - Estonia - Finland (Karelia - Sami) - Greenland - Iceland - Latvia - Lithuania - Norway - Sweden |
References
- Cronshaw, Andrew. "A New Pulse for the Pols". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 58-63. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0nl:Deense muziek