Basco with Jullie Hjetland, Live in Denmark / A RootsWorld audio feature

Basco with Jullie Hjetland

RootsWorld Radio presents a special concert performance recorded at the Tønder Festival in Denmark. Basco calls their music "Pan-Atlantic Mighty Folk," and its mix of traditions, and the original songs that spring from them, make the band one of Denmark's musical treasures. They have invited Danish/Norwegian singer Jullie Hjetland to join them for the set. We'll also take a break mid-concert and let the band members tell you more about themselves. The concert is available to our listeners with the cooperation of the Tønder Festival, Folk Spot Denmark 2016 and online radio www.RadioFolk.dk, one of the stations that hosts each week of RootsWorld Radio.

Find the artists online:
Basco
Jullie Hjetland

About the performers:

Jullie Hjetland
The Danish/Norwegian singer and composer Jullie Hjetland is a rising star on the Nordic folk scene. With her colourful compositions and the primordial energy that characterises her personal musical expression, she is a sought-after and versatile musician with an enviable ability to captivate and influence her audiences with her natural approach to her music. Jullie Hjetland was born in Svendborg on the island of Funen in Denmark in 1981 and she has been singing from a young age. From her Danish mother and her Norwegian father and through her upbringing in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, she is fully fluent in these three Scandinavian languages. In addition, she has lived both in Greenland and Finland, and this has contributed to her deep understanding and appreciation of the Nordic folk tradition.

Basco
Basco really just want to tell you some stories. Their music is complex and varied, from hard hitting, high-speed reels full of rosin dust and sweat, through sweet and melancholy tunes that tell of loves won and lost, through fitful fever-dreams of fractal complexity and fascinating texture, to songs that when you come down to it, are really just about sex.

Basco’s material is nearly all original, stealing shamelessly and frivolously from Scandinavian, English, Celtic and American idioms to create a kind of organic, soupy stew – full of vitamins and anti-oxidants.

If you give it a chance, it’ll lure you into the forest, give you a magic sleeping draught and keep you prisoner in a gilded cage in a tower on a hill in the darkest reaches surrounded by briars until a prince comes and saves you. But in a nice way, obviously.

The band members:

Andreas Tophøj – fiddler, viola player (oh well) and lion tamer. Andreas is also resident professor of applied rhetoric, and also does the accounts. Violin Mandolin Vocals

Hal Parfitt-Murray – Fiddler, mandolin player and lead singer with mercurial charm and really nice scarves. He also cleans up after the monkey. Accordion Trombone

Anders Ringgaard Andersen – Accordion player, Trombone wrangler and horn arranger, Anders also takes care of any fighting off of groupies that needs to be done. An utterly and completely charming man. That’s not a joke, it’s just the simple truth. Cittern

Ale Carr – Citternista extrordinaire and part time dragon slayer, Ale represents Basco’s contact with the Old Ones who will rise up at the End Times and engulf the world in tentacles and fire. But he’s really sweet and has loads of kids and you wouldn’t think he was like that at all.

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