The Daily Swarm

While many festivals play to genres, Denmark’s Roskilde proves it’s the best large-scale festival on the planet by simply booking the greatest artists in music. Last year’s line up could have been their peak: Radiohead, Neil Young, Slayer, My Bloody Valentine, Judas Priest, Jay-Z. At one point I met a volunteer who told me he had been to the festival every year since it started in 1971. I gave him a fast quiz: “Yeah, well who played in 1978?” He thought for a moment and his eyes lit up. “Bob Marley & The Wailers.” OK, you win. Roskilde has always been the best.

But it’s more than the bands that make Roskilde larger-than-life. It’s a non-profit festival, where earnings are funneled into the The Roskilde Festival Charity Society which has donated nearly $20 million dollars to organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, and Support the War Victims in Iraq. And it’s run by an army of 25,000 volunteers doing every job imaginable. If you volunteer for a day, you get a free pass for the festival. Volunteering at Roskilde has become a rite of passage among Danish music fans and it’s not uncommon to see generations of families working together to support the music and the festival they love.

Last year 110,000 people attended Roskilde. Camping is included in the ticket price, and people start moving in a week before the music starts – which means tens of thousands of people live at the festival for 10 days. With it’s own daily newspaper and radio station, Roskilde is an entire world unto itself. The Daily Swarm sat down with the festival’s head booker Rikke Øxner right before the festival began this week.

photo of Rikke Øxner by Thomas Kjær

The Daily Swarm: What was your history before Roskilde?

Rikke Øxner: My Roskilde in the audience was in 1984. I was only 19 and completely fell in love with the place and the atmosphere. With one single exception, I have been here every year since – although my role in the festival has changed quite a bit in the meantime.

Back in 1984 I had just finished high school. A few years later, as a part of my university studies in mass communication and culture, I was working on study on youth and music culture, and came in contact with the Venue Festival. They offered me an internship, which I accepted.

As it turned out, the chairman of the Venue Festival was Leif Skov, who was the director of the much larger Roskilde Festival. A week later he called me and offered me a a job as his assistant booker. I resisted, saying “why don’t you wait and see how I perform as an intern”. But his reply – typical for his sense of humour – was “No, you’re hired – unless off course, I catch you with your fingers in the till.”

So, in the spring of 1995 I started as an assistant booker, and when Leif Skov resigned in 2002, I became the head of booking.

What was your first experience at the festival?

My first memories are more about the feeling of being there than about the actual acts. Walking across the giant field of grass, all the tents, drinking cold beers in the sun. The extreme cornucopia of music I did not know, hadn’t even heard about – I felt completely exhilarated and blissful and remember getting the chills over and over. I remember lying at the camp site listening to Lou Reed doing his sound check, waiting to get in to the festival to hear his act, feeling completely happy.

Who were the first artists you remember confirming?

I remember booking a very young The Cardigans during my first year. That year I also assisted on the booking of Oasis – who, by the way, will be coming to Roskilde this year as well.

There’s a running commentary in the music media that we are running out of headliners – that there are fewer and fewer acts able to fill stadiums. Do you also see a dearth of headliners now or in the future?

I don’t really see a lack of headliners. This year we have Coldplay and Slipknot on our list of acts, not to mention Oasis, Faith No More and Pet Shop Boys. That’s not lack of headliners.

But, that said, it’s an important point that due to its size and nature, Roskilde Festival, I think, is a lot less sensitive than a lot of other festivals regarding headliners. It’s not imperative for us to have, say, two headliners every day; we don’t need a Neil Young every day. We do need major names, but even more so we need to catch the shooting stars while they’re shooting, and maybe even be part of their ascent. Our audience loves the fact that they had the chance to experience bands like Kings of Leon and Arctic Monkeys before they became as large as they are today. And they will also love for them to revisit, when they have grown into major headliners.

This year they will get the opportunity to experience White Lies and Deadmau5 – who knows, maybe they will be the ones written with the large types on our poster next time they’re here. To the Roskilde-audience it is more about having a full four-day-experience of quality music for every taste than just about headliners.

The festival happens in July. What month do you start booking acts?

We book more or less all year round. As soon as one month after the festival we start looking into potential acts for the year to come. Typically we’ll start out looking into the possibility of booking bands that couldn’t make it to the festival that just ended – maybe because they hadn’t made a release as planned. Also we take out or wish list and start looking at that as a start, not to mention wishes from our audience. They write us year-round, and we take their suggestions quite seriously.

You have some of the biggest artists in the world playing alongside also so many smaller bands from all over the world. Which of the smaller bands were you personally most excited to book, and give some suggestions of smaller bands you think festival-goers should not miss?

FUCKED UP: Canadian, uncompromising, hard core. He is so extreme on stage – Damian Abraham. “The Reverend” as he’s called. He’s so uncompromising.

ZIZEK CLUB: Rumour has it that one of the hottest club scenes in the world is in Buenos Aires. This year we have persuaded of them to pull up stakes to come to Roskilde to show us and share the best.

SHUGO TOKUMARU: A fantastic Japanese singer/songwriter, acoustic pop with folk tradition mixed with a Japanese sound. Most is handheld, lots of percussion, bells, rattles, and bare feet.

PAAVOHARJU: This is Finish Freak Folk! I have never heard it myself, but my co-bookers call it cosmic folk pop. They are known as complete and utter hippies, bordering on psychotic! I seriously hope to get a chance to see them myself.

Also: I hope I’ll get the opportunity (which can be hard due to lack of time during the festival) to explore some of the temporary New York-sound like: GANG GANG DANCE, THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART, and BLACK DICE.

How do you keep up with new music? What are the best and most reliable sources you use?

Most importantly: Don’t think you know it all yourself.

We all have a background, having sprout from a certain environment or grown up in a time or milieu with a certain genre or type of music. That will be an influence. So you need to build a solid network in every part of the music industry, every scene, every genre, and – maybe most importantly – the in all the young, enthused, sometimes even obscure little corners of it. Off course I also read magazines, browse the music alleys of the internet and other publications to get a hold of what is stirring.

Apart from that, we travel, year round, in order to see, listen and experience bands for ourselves. And very important: We go to SXSW in Austin, which is an invaluable source of inspiration.

The Danish krone is very strong right now. It’s making it so you aren’t selling as many tickets internationally as usual (your website explains you’re making a rare exception these year, selling single-day tickets, to make up for this). How does a global recession affect a non-profit festival in a generally economically stable Denmark?

The purchasing power of the Swedish and the Islandic people are heavily reduced at the moment, so ticket sales have been lower than normal in these countries. That’s a shame, because we very much value our Nordic neighbours among our guests. But I can’t say that it has affected us booking-wise. Actually my budget for this year is 12% higher than last year.

Our philosophy is that we need to maintain music as the centre of this festival, and it is our ambition – to me even our duty – to create an outstanding festival for our guests – financial crisis or not.

Does your job ever end? Do you get much of a chance to enjoy the music you’re presenting, or is it all work all the time?

No, my job never ends. I never really get to take part in the party that we have arranged. Fortunately my work is my passion and all my life, and I get to hear new music and see concerts all over all year round.

Have you had any great epiphanies, any great musical moments at the festival you’ll never forget?

SWANS, 1989: One afternoon I dropped by a stage by coincidence – and I was sucked inside the tent because of this specific, dark siren song. It was like being called down on a curse, that luckily still gets to me once in a while…

EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN, 1989: I had never heard of them, but a friend had recommended this German band. It was late night at “Arena Stage”, I was absolutely dead when I entered the tent, but with a stroke of magic I was set to another world. The band, the nightlight, the atmosphere, it all. I had it all!

PRIMUS, 1989: It had been raining heavily for days, everything was soaked, and the area in front of Orange stage was covered in mud. Suddenly a band turned everything upside/down. The singer, Les Clayton, was out of this world and gave us all hope.

BJÖRK, 1994: I saw this fantastic concert with a fantastic friend. Everything was no less than magnificent. Even though I was forefront inside the tent, I never realized the pushing and moshing – I was just a happy audience member back then, enjoying the music.

What do you think makes Roskilde stand out from the other great festivals in the world?

Roskilde Festival covers it all, it is broadly-based with music from all over the world, representing a wide range of genres. We are not only dependant on big headliners; the new, unknown and upcoming names are widely appreciated by our guests. Many of them prefer the upcoming headliners to the established ones. We have an extremely curious and open-minded audience; here you get to experience bands who have never played in Europe before – with an audience singing along.

Please check out the other interviews in The Daily Swarm’s Great Curators series
Fra Soler of Primavera Sound
Ashley Capps of Bonnaroo
Enric Palau of Sónar