Eurosonic Noorderslag 2020: Switzerland

13 December 2019 - Editorial

At Eurosonic Noorderslag (ESNS) in January the spotlight will be focused firmly on Switzerland. Some 22 Swiss acts are poised to play the Groningen event and a raft of Swiss-focused activity is planned.

Switzerland may have a worldwide reputation for its chocolate, carefully crafted timepieces and snow-capped mountains but outside the country few are aware of its vibrant music scene.

Far from being limited to yodelling and volksmusik, Switzerland boasts numerous adventurous and inimitable artists.

Among the acts playing ESNS, and looking to follow in the footsteps of successful Swiss musical exports such as Yello, Young Gods and Krocus, are folk act Black Sea Dahu, rock band Coilguns, singer-songwriter Emilie Zoé and soul act Muthoni Drummer Queen.

Box.1 A Sneak Preview

Swiss music industry revenue was up 4.8% last year, according to recorded music figures from IFPI, and despite its relatively small, 8.5 million population, Switzerland is home to one of the most densely packed festival markets in the world. 

Box 2. Recorded music revenue (US$ millions, trade value) 2018

The country has four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh, but despite the linguistic divisions, some Swiss acts do enjoy nationwide success. The highest earning track in Switzerland last year was by Swiss rap act Lo & Ledux.

The country’s artists are also making inroads abroad. Recent successes include Basel-based metal act Schammasch, which cracked the US-chart last month with their fourth album, Hearts Of No Light.

Made up of twenty-six cantons, divided into four different linguistic regions, Switzerland is bound together by what the Swiss call Willensnation; which means “a nation by will”.

The word illustrates the Swiss desire to reconcile differences and find commonalities, and it appears to work – Switzerland is one of the world’s wealthiest nations with a long history of democratic rule.

When it comes to the Swiss music industry, however, the disparate linguistic nature of the country makes things a little complex.

“Switzerland does not have one music market, it has four,” says Swiss Music Export’s Jean Zuber.

The German-speaking part of Switzerland is home to two-thirds of the country’s inhabitants. Locals speak Swiss-German, which is not understood by their German neighbours.

While acts singing in Swiss-German may find great support among the 5.5 million people living in that part of the country, a major local hit act can only gain relatively minor success unless they set their sights on breaking out. In order to do that they inevitably need to sing in English or German.

There are also major challenges for the French and Italian speaking acts in Switzerland. Their local markets are even smaller, at 2 million and 0.5 million people respectively. In those regions, revenue from local touring and recorded music exploitation will not usually amount to anything more than the equivalent of a part-time job.

Looking abroad to France or Italy is a better prospect than going to the German-speaking part of Switzerland. After all, the Ticino speak a form of Italian that is understood in Italy, the same applies to the French singing Romands, who can play concerts in France without language barriers.

The Romansh speaking community, which consists of only 50,000 people, is Switzerland’s fourth linguistic tribe and its smallest. The majority of Romansh speakers live in the Graubünden region, for musicians the obstacles to achieving more than local recognition are considerable.

The impact of regional media, such as radio and print, is often confined to the individual corners of the country, so acts looking for nationwide exposure need look elsewhere.

When it comes to building an international audience, the challenges are even greater but Zuber says there is no lack of talent and enthusiasm among Swiss musicians.

He says, “They are often remarkably creative in a humorous or unexpected way, some are real musical trendsetters. As well as being multilingual, they are usually fond of travelling, and for them breaking down boundaries is a major focus.”

Switzerland may not have a history of spawning internationally renowned acts but Fabienne Schmuki, head of promotion and label manager at distributor/label Irascible, says the perception of Swiss music, both at home and overseas, is beginning to change.

She says, “Swiss people used to feel a little embarrassed to listen to Swiss music but that is no longer the case. There is much more confidence in the music scene in Switzerland, artists have become more creative and experimental and are not interested in imitating acts from abroad.

“It is extremely hard to get Swiss acts into the UK or US markets but bands including Klaus Johann Grobe and Zeal & Ardor have done well there recently. We have some great artists to show off and events such as Eurosonic give us an opportunity to do that.”

Cyril Yeterian, the founder of Geneva-based record shop and label Bongo Joe Records, says that such is international reach of the music he releases, people from as far and wide as Mexico and Korea come to his store to check it out first hand.

As well as albums by contemporary Swiss acts, Bongo Joe releases a remarkably broad range of compilations spanning the far corners of the globe and decades past. They include collections of anything from ’80s Spanish synth-wave to Anatolian psych-pop.

A musician himself, who has played Glastonbury and toured widely, Yeterian knows only too well the challenges involved in breaking out of Switzerland. He considers Eurosonic to be a good platform on which to get noticed by the international industry, and among the Bongo Joe-signed acts to play there in January will be kraut rock-influenced sextet L’Eclair, and Amami – a trio from Geneva who mix dancehall, tropical beats and dub.

Says Yeterian, “Eurosonic is a really strong showcase for artists, we already have some Dutch and Scandinavian live bookers waiting to see our acts play there and if impressed they will sign them.

“The hardest music to sell is contemporary music, particularly Swiss bands outside of Switzerland. In the US they all think we are Swedish! We don’t really exist on the musical map, so my goal is to export as much Swiss music as we can because there is a great scene in Switzerland, particularly in Geneva."