Danish Music and all that Jazz!

Danish music celebrates an annual rock festival in the city of Roskilde; second only to the UK’s Glastonbury version, with over 100,000 ticket sales.  Over the past few years huge bands such as Guns N Roses, U2, Black Sabbath and Green Day have all played the venue.

The Danish music act of 1976 was the first legislation of its type in the world, with funds allocated by the Danish parliament, but with that body having no say whatsoever in how the monies got distributed.  This allowed specific specialized sections to be created concentrating on the likes of regional orchestras and music schools; as well as many of the genres such as rock and pop, etc.

This is now bearing fruit as Denmark breaks free of the heavy influence it has had held over it by bands from the UK and USA.  That said, it is still difficult to define what is actually the sound of Denmark; but local artists now have International ambitions that simply were not there until recently.

Back in 1963 Danish music received a huge boost when – represented by Grethe and Jørgen Ingmann – Denmark won the Eurovision Song Contest.  The song was a jazz waltz called Dansevise, which translates to dance ballad.  Rather than use this to move forward, if anything the music scene went backwards.  Indeed, jazz continued to be the most popular genre throughout the sixties.  An establishment opened in the capital Copenhagen during the decade called Jazzhus Montmarte; it was meant to recreate the jazz club theme from Paris and New York City.  It did very well and became a major music venue for acts from across Europe.

Free Jazz was explored in this period; with chord changes and tempos being discarded.  John Tchicai, a Dane with Congolese parentage became one of Europe’s first free jazz musicians, with a terrific talent on the saxophone.  Jazz has long been popular in Scandinavia, especially back in the 1930’s, but had to move underground a decade later following German occupation, with the new regime opposed to it.

Rock music in Denmark does very well, but doesn’t travel well and very few have enjoyed any success outside of the country.  Danish music celebrates an annual rock festival in the city of Roskilde; second only to the UK’s Glastonbury version, with over 100,000 ticket sales.  Over the past few years huge bands such as Guns N Roses, U2, Black Sabbath and Green Day have all played the venue.

In the 1990’s Danish music finally had a major success away from its shores in the form of Aqua’s hugely popular ‘barbie girl’; which became the Country’s biggest cultural export.  With 15 million album sales and 6 million singles the export revenue exploded; even threatening Danish bacon as the top export for a time.  Another massive 90’s triumph came from Whigfield, who took her catchy ‘Saturday Night’ record to number one in the UK singles charts in the summer of 1994.

The Danish Ministry of Culture supports an organization known as MXD – Music Export Denmark.  These create export initiatives, such as promotions at festivals and industry fairs.   If everybody continues to pull in the same direction then Danish music can carry on flourishing.