Roskildeee!

With all 115.000 tickets for this year’s Glastonbury festival already sold out (and in the space of just 3 hours, no less), I’ll be looking to the Roskilde Festival to be my musical mecca this year.

And luckily, the line-up looks very promising thus far. Among my favourites are Devendra Banhart, a young folk singer-songwriter with a very unique voice and take on life (think hippie-ish), Bikstok Røgsystem, the first purely Danish take on the Roots-Ragga-Dancehall genres of Jamaica, Chic, “the Beatles of Disco” – superbly dance music, though only Nile Rodgers of the original group is still touring, though mostly due to Bernard Edwards’ tragic death in 1996.

Also, I have great expectations to Femi Kuti and his band, Femi being the son of Nigerian afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti whose afroroots funkjazz is ever enjoyable and Femi taking up the mantle left by his father. Mew is a Danish band that I’ve looking forward to hearing live, their grand yet thoughtful rock music was once described to me as “symphonic post-rock”, whatever that means. Also, ever since I first heard the American hiphop ensemble the Roots’ LP, Do you want more?!!!??! back in the day, I’ve been looking for a chance to see Rahzel live. Known as the “Godfather of Noise”, Rahzel is the foremost exponent of that rarely heard hip hop art of human beat boxing.

On top of that, there’s Mikael Simpson, The Thievery Corporation, Mory Kanté, and all the others that I don’t even know yet. Listening and being surprised by new bands and new music is always the highlight of the Roskilde Festival.

Now all I have to do is buy the ticket..

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