- Thursday 2 July
- Friday 3 July
It was a moving, intense and raw experience when the remarkable Shovel Dance Collective visited Roskilde Festival in 2024. Here, the nine musicians collectively revealed the beauty and horror of life through old ballads and folk melodies filtered through an experimental musical approach that brought the voices of the past to life and made them present.
As the music editor of the Danish newspaper Information wrote in a report from the concert: "I am left feeling dizzy, struck by something unexpectedly heavy and serious, yet also light-hearted and cheerful after Shovel Dance Collective's poignant, thunderous death blow."
And that is precisely what Shovel Dance Collective does – it brings forgotten and repressed stories to life through the legacy of folk music, evoking sorrow, laughter and raging protest. At the same time, it frees folk music from nostalgia and, drawing inspiration from metal, free improv, ambient and drone, creates an approach to this legacy that is both rooted in rich traditions and radical. With their unique sound, they have become a leading voice in a new, queer and subversive folk scene that highlights the power-critical and anti-colonialist potential of folk music.
The collective debuted with the acclaimed album The Water is the Shovel of the Shore (2022), followed it up in 2024 with the album The Shovel Dance, where the experimental approach comes through even stronger. At the same time, however, the collective is branching out into several related side projects, where the individual musicians can unfold their voices. When The Shovel Dance Collective returns to Roskilde Festival, they will offer two specially curated shows featuring songs performed by the entire collective as well as elements from the various side projects. A unique opportunity to immerse yourself even more in the collective's fascinating and radical world.
