When Annette Bellaoui from Denmark decided to form a band in Denmark, she was certain about what she wanted represented through the music and her efforts paid off beautifully, forming Radiant Arcadia in 2013. In India for the Sur Jahan festival, the band currently comprises Radia Sanchez (doff), Karen Jorgensen, Channe Nussbaum, Aoife Scott (Irish hand drum called bodhran), Salam Susu (harp), Anne Eltard (violin), Maren Hallberg (accordion) and Tine Vitskov (clarinet and bass clarinet). They perform a variety of music from Nordic and Celtic folk music, to jazz, rock, Klezmer and Middle Eastern ballads.
“Six years ago, I had an idea to create a band of women musicians crossing borders because I thought women are underrepresented in the arts everywhere even in Denmark. I thought we needed a band of women musicians of diverse backgrounds and different languages. My starting point would be that they are of Muslim, Jewish and Christian background. Luckily, they said yes when I presented the proposal. Currently, there is a core group of six and a variety of others who we will pull in depending on venue requirements. We usually perform with an eight members group,” says Annette Bellaoui.
The band is unique, as they are the only ones, in the world, who cover such a wide range of languages, cultures and music styles. Each comes from a different background, and they add their music to the group. “Salam is from Syria, Radia is from Spain who sings in Spanish, Turkish and Mongolian, Aoife is from Ireland, Sara is British Pakistani and Sakina is from Austria but Turkish Kurdish. We have developed a repertoire and perform a huge variety of songs from traditional Danish polkas to Klezmer, Irish folk songs, quwaalis and Arabic folk songs. I think the closest we get to a commonality is folk music and songs. We teach each other the songs. Together, we sing in 14 languages,” says Channe Nussbaum, who sings in Hebrew and Yiddish.
We are all professional musicians, who are used to working in the field of music and within the field of ethical music of a very wide variety. Lyrics are never a problem as it is basically just another language. Mostly we sing our own compositions with the style that it comes from but it turns into a Radiant Arcadia style for the group,” says Anne Eltard.
