专访丹麦BASIX乐团：再演绎《我的歌声里》

No guitar, no keyboard and even no drums. But why the audience are so electrified, dancing to the music, waving hands and screaming high as if in a grand dancing party? You can never imagine that all those beautiful rhythm and exciting beats on the stage are produced by human voice. Yes, ALL HUMAN VOICE!

On April 26 at Shanghai Shallow Water Bay Art Center, dressed in hand-made suits and red sneakers, the Danish vocal group (A Cappella) BASIX had wowed the audience from the very moment the concert began all the way till the curtain was down.

BASIX is a Danish A Cappella group consisting of six vocalists that have amazed worldwide audiences with their diverse musical style. One of their most well-known song for Chinese audiences is probably the re-interpretation of the Chinese song “You Exist in My song”.

Video: “You Exist in My song”

has had the pleasure to have an exclusive and personal interview with Basix prior to the concert.

People in China are very straightforward. It’s like what you see is what you get. People are not ironic. A lot of people from Denmark tend to be very ironic. So you always have to guess “Are they being ironic? ”

When we go to different countries, we like to bring something in the native language of that country. And of course, we want to do that in China as well. It’s just great to be here.

I love learning languages. What I notice about Chinese is the four tones. They are just so complicated.

It started with two of the members, Niels and John who are sitting next to me. They were studying at the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark. For a Christmas get-together, they wanted to do a little fun thing as part of the entertainment. It was not a professional group. It’s just something they wanted to do for fun. Niels heard of a group in Italy. And he thought this sound was awesome — these six guys singing together. They really sounded well. So he brought the music to John. So for a couple of years it was actually like a hobby. And then we thought we were good enough. We tried to go for being professional musicians. We were not the first A Capella group in Demark, but we were the first A Capella group that made it to the mainstream audience.

When we started singing together, we were still in school. At that time you could find time between the study and the tests. We had time to sing a lot. Later on we got jobs and at the same time we were singing. But all of our jobs are flexible. For instance, I am also graphic designer. When we were on tour, it’s easy for me to help my customers from back home in Denmark because I can do it in the hotel room. Sometimes I need to work at night. But that’s part of the game.

It depends. When we have tour coming up, it’s more intense. Then we’ll plan to do it two days in a row. And then we have time off for our different jobs again because we have to make time for both.

I would say that we get most of our inspiration from ourselves from our everyday life, from what we hear on the radio, from what we experience at the home and in our heads.

We get very inspired by trips like this. Meeting your cultures, meeting your people and your ways of thinking.

I think you can have talent in various ways. I play a lot of soccer. I am quite skilled, but I am not talented. I do it a lot so I get skilled. But now I don’t consider myself being talented as a soccer player. But I can say I am talented as a singer. It’s quite easy to see who is talented and who is skilled. But for both the talented and the skilled, you really need to practice and to be really serious about what you do. PRACTICE MAKES BETTER. What makes the best result is going with your heart.

I think people are so complex in personalities, so you can see a lot of talents in one person that will not blossom because the person doesn’t know how to come through with it. Then there is another less talented person who’s got the power or the will to burn through.

The voice is the instrument you always have with you. And you have so many possibilities using your voice. Like we do, we have vocal percussion, tenors, and bass… We can play with the voice. And that’s the charm to me. We can try to sound like a band or sing like a choir. When you have voice, you can have anything.

Obviously, my children listen to a lot of music, a lot of singing. So I guess they will naturally be inspired by what I do. But I will not teach them unless they want to. I am not forcing them into being taught music. But I would like them to have an interest towards learning music stuff. I’d love to teach them but I will not force them. In my opinion, it’s very important to have just a little music knowledge because it has been proved that if you know just a little bit of music, it’s easier to learn languages, it’s easier to learn math. So it is good have a musical understanding. But whatever you want to be, whatever you want to learn, it has to come from interest and from your heart. I don’t think you can force any person to learn something they don’t really want to learn. Most children become artist because they are inspired by what they see and what they do. I guess that my children will naturally have an interest towards music.

I love it when I see parents with children enjoying watching the children, whether its music or if its sports or it is something else that the children are interested in. The parents just enjoy watching their children doing something. It is the process, more than the achievement that they have the emphasis on. So I love it when it’s just like “Oh, it looks like you are having fun now, it looks like you are really interested in that thing. It maskes me sad when I hear about children struggling with the expectations of their parents, and when I see parents putting their own preferences and dreams on their children。

I know a lady having a little girl. And that girl really loves to sing. Her mom tells me: “My daughter really loves to sing and watches the talent shows.” But, she doesn’t really sing very well. So she kept asking me, “What am I going to do? She want it so much. It just sounds horrible. ” There are so many parents consider their children stars and want them to appear in talent shows without realizing they are not very good.

Some of the things we do as a group is we take turns doing. And the red shoes, they were actually part of that. When I had the job, I was looking for clothes and seeing what were going to wear on the stage. And I asked the group how would you feel about having some shoes that don’t go with the outfit. They are very loud. Actually the group loved it. I think they stand out.

I am the one who has been taking over the role as the costume responsible guy. I really like the shoes with the outfit. The outfit was made by a tailor in Shanghai. We have another set made as well that we are going to use later on. For those, I do not want the red shoes because they do not go with the outfit.

To me, this is also a way to expressing something, personally I like to have these things that break the rules. Always there are so many rules that I think are just ridiculous. Why do we have to look a specific way? Why are there correct ways to put things together? I don’t want that. I want to show that you can do it in different ways. And the shoes is one way of doing that.

This year's tour of BASIX in China include Beijing on 4/14, Shanghai on 4/26, Guangzhou on 5/1-2 and Shenzhen on 5/3.

Find more on BASIX's official website.

The interview video is on the way…stay with us for more details and fun.