Since 2010 ROSA – The Danish Rock Council and SPOT Festival have collaborated with Spanish culture Magazine Zona de Obras on the presentation of Nordic music in Spain. The main occasion has been zdO’s festival, Días Nórdicos, which presents manifestations of Nordic culture in many art forms, and which has had an off-shoot in Latin America since 2014 and most recently in November-December last year including a successful workshop and a subsequent concert in Buenos Aires featuring Nordic and Argentinian musicians (with Centro Cultural Recoleta hosting the event).
Now we are going to take the workshop/concert idea to the next level at this year’s SPOT, with four very diverse Argentinian musicians mixing musical genes with three Spanish colleagues, one Faroese, two Danes, and a Brit.
Four days before the festival, all the musicians will get together for a workshop to make brand new material together, and the result can be heard on Friday (Godsbanen) and Saturday (Dokk1) during the SPOT Festival – just like the Spanish and Argentine musicians will get short solo slots right after Friday’s workshop premiere.
Are such workshops fruitful? Well, let’s take November 2016 in Buenos Aires; Faroese Teitur was in the studio with his Argentine colleague Lucio Mantel. With him he had brought some lyrics which had never really found the right tune, but after just half an hour with Lucio, it was in the bag, and “I have found my Happiness” had found its bitter-sweet wrapping. And that is just one example of successful Transatlantic collaboration. In fact, many of the musicians involved have continued to work together after the workshops.
Teitur and Lucio will take part in the SPOT workshop and they are not the only musicians who were also in the workshop in Buenos Aires. This time however the familiar faces, the female troubadour Mariana Päraway, Latin pop smith Diosque, as well as the musical wizard and jack of all trades Axel Krygier, will be matched with two Spanish acts – the droll singer Le Parody and indie rocker Ricardo Vicente. Finally, from Denmark we have modern folk singer Ida Wenøe, and then Slow Train Soul, where Danish electronica veteran Morten Varano once again has been teamed up with the British Trinidadian singer Lady Z.
No one knows the results before the 5th of May! (the concert will be repeated in a 45 min. version on Saturday May 6th at Dokk1.)
The Días Nórdicos concerts are the results of the joint efforts of ROSA – The Danish Rock Council, Zona de Obras and Centro Cultural Recoleta.