Bjork and Sigur Ros, Icelandic Show .......World Music 6/28/08

Björk and Sigur Rós Team Up For Náttúra Concert

Icelandic Show To Be Webcast Live On Nat Geo Music

by Tom Pryor
06/23/08

excerpts: http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic

• Náttúra Concert Website
• Björk Official Website
• Buy Björk music on iTunes
• Sigur Rós Official Website
• Buy the new Sigur Rós album on iTunes
• Sign Up For Nat Geo Music Newsletter

Bjork and Sigur Ros come to you via National Geographic and the internet.

Nat Geo Music plans to webcast five hours of show footage from the open-air Náttúra Festival in a large park near the center of the city of Reykjavik, Iceland, including performances by Iceland's foremost two pop stars. (If this is what the Icelandic population calls "pop," I'd love to hear their more experimental stuff.)

Iceland, which contains "the largest unspoilt wilderness left in Europe" according to the Náttúra blog, faces a threat from aluminum smelting plants that are cropping up there. The festival also aims to publicize Andri Snær Magnason's book Dreamland: A Self Help Manual to a Frightened Nation, an Icelandic bestseller about the environmental situation that will be published in an English translation next month.

Each artist released a statement in advance of the concert, which you can watch online for free starting at 3 p.m. EST on Saturday, June 28.

Björk:
"Too often battles being fought for nature turn into something negative and into mudslinging. We will not go that way, we are not saying that this and that is forbidden, we are rather asking 'what about all these other possibilities?' The 21st century is not going to be another oil century but rather a century where we need to recycle, think green and design both power plants and our surroundings in harmony with nature."

Photo: chromwaves

Sigur Rós vocalist: Jón Thor Birgisson

"We are not a political band and don't think musicians should set themselves as spokespeople on anything at all, but sometimes you see things going on in your own backyard and find that just as a human being you cannot stand by and do nothing. The changes that are going on in Iceland need to be the subject of debate and not snuck through the back door because no one lives in the wilderness and there is urban apathy or a general lack of awareness."

Photo: production designer matt

See Also:

• Live Music Webcasting Starts Making Sense in 2008
• Details Emerge About Radiohead's Green Touring Techniques
• Coachella Wants To Be Green
• Dance Powered Cellphone Chargers To Debut at Glastonbury

WATCH WEBCAST HERE

http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/article/

content.article/bjork_sigur?email=music_20080627

On June 28th, 2008 Icelandic superstars Björk and Sigur Rós (pictured) will team up to perform a free concert in their hometown of Reykjavik. The Náttúra concert is a bid to raise awareness of the destruction of Iceland's natural landscape, and will be webcast live from from 7pm to 12pm GMT (3pm—8pm EST) on Nat Geo Music.

The Náttúra concert will be an open-air event, held at the Botanical Garden on Laugavegur, near the center of Reykjavik, Iceland. The country boasts the largest unspoilt wilderness left in Europe, and Náttúra is being organized as a response to the ongoing environmental degradation caused by Iceland's increasingly invasive aluminium smelting activity.

The Náttúra concert will also spotlight the book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual to a Frightened Nation by Andri Snær Magnason. The book, a best-seller in Iceland, is published in English next month by Citizen Press and has already won the Icelandic Literary Award and the Icelandic Bookseller Prize.

Both headlining artists have recently finished a series of touring commitments, with Sigur Rós releasing their brand album on June 23 and Björk following 2007's Grammy-nominated Volta with a worldwide tour.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/bjork-and-sigur.html