This Saturday, who not attend a free concert in Iceland? There's no need to book a flight; leave your carbon footprint as is, and let Björk and Sigur Rós 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 politicalband and don't think musicians should set themselves as spokespeople onanything 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 donothing. The changes that are going on in Iceland need to be thesubject of debate and not snuck through the back door because no onelives in the wilderness and there is urban apathy or a general lack ofawareness."
Photo: production designer matt
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