28 Music Week 28.11.14 PROFILE ICELANDIC MUSIC BREAKING THE ICE
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Iceland Airwaves is paving the way for Icelandic music to be heard by the masses, encouraging travel to the Nordic island to see talent on its home turf before acts try for international gigs
EVENTS n BY CORAL WILLIAMSON
S
igtryggur Baldursson, better known as Siggi, is a busy man. When Music Week sits down with him at Iceland Airwaves, the
ex-Sugarcubes drummer has already played more than one gig during the multi-venue festival – but like almost everyone in the Icelandic music scene, he enjoys juggling projects. As MD of Iceland Music Export (IMX), Baldursson runs various programmes encouraging the export of Icelandic music, largely by bringing together the many disparate strands of Iceland’s eclectic scene under one roof, making it easier to see everything at once from an international standpoint. He explains: “We do two websites: one in Icelandic which is an educational thing really, for businesses here; and one in English, which is more like a portal into the Icelandic music scene. “I’m loathe to use the word music business
here, as we don’t have much of one, but we have a wonderful music community. What I think part of the character of Icelandic music is, is that it adheres to a scene, a community, rather than a business. “That’s why it’s very creative, and bands are
obsessed with carving out their own niche. They’re constantly comparing themselves to their peers,
ABOVE
Harpa: Opened in 2011, Harpa concert hall saw the likes of Caribou, The Flaming Lips and The Knife play at this year’s Iceland Airwaves
not the charts. Although that’s not to say we’re any better than anyone else.” The creative force of Iceland’s music community
goes some way to explain how Iceland Airwaves, which began as a one-day event in an airplane hanger in 1999, now attracts more than 4,500 international visitors each year, and accounts for a 50% increase in overseas credit card spending during November. Then there’s also their upcoming presence at
next year’s Eurosonic Noorderslag; Iceland has been chosen as the focus nation at the European showcase festival in January, and will see more than a dozen acts play at the Netherlands event.
What attention are you getting from abroad? We’re getting ridiculous attention from abroad. Eurosonic invited us to be the focus nation in 2015, and we didn’t even ask for it. We feel pretty blessed, these days. Things are going very well for the export of Icelandic music. We had over 100% increase in gigs abroad with Icelandic artists between 2012 and 2013. Those aren’t high numbers - the gigs were 700-plus, then more than 14,000 in 2013.
What do you put that increase down to? It comes down to a few different things. In 2013, we had all the biggest Icelandic acts touring - Sigur
Ros were touring, Bjork, Of Monsters & Men - and they had Icelandic supports on their tours. Then again, having said that, we’re looking at at least 1,200 gigs this year, and none of those acts are touring. The information we draw from that is that there’s a lot of grassroots action; there are a lot of new bands coming out of the woodwork and getting a lot of stuff done. Part of it is also a better infrastructure, better
support systems in place. You can apply for at least two or three travel grants now. There’s an operation called Reykjavik Air Bridge, which is a project by Reykjavik city and IcelandAir. You can apply for reduced air fares. I wouldn’t call it a complete grant, but it helps. We got this new grant in operation in 2013; the Government gave us a small export fund, around £100,000 per year, but it can still do a lot of creative damage. We’ve divided it so half goes towards travel grants, and the rest goes to marketing grants. So if you’re taking your project to market,
doing a bigger tour, releasing your stuff, buying PR - whatever you’re doing, you can apply for this grant. It’s been used on a whole variety of projects, in all genres. We see a lot of excitement not just in the indie music vein, but also with new classical composers, plus we have at least two jazz acts touring in Germany quite regularly now. We have
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