EarsOpen: Hjálmar — Icelandic Reggae

This is the first entry in what will be a recur­ring blog series titled ‘Ear­sOpen’ which gives me a plat­form to share some music that has caught my musi­cal imag­i­na­tion. Let’s begin!

For a small and sparsely pop­u­lated coun­try, Ice­land seems to have an abnor­mally large num­ber of musi­cians. Undoubt­edly, the astound­ing nat­ural beauty and the rich cul­tural his­tory play a sig­nif­i­cant role.

While a few Ice­landic artists such as Björk and Sigur Rós have achieved fame out­side the island nation, a major­ity of Ice­landic music remains mostly unheard by for­eign ears.

Hjál­mar (myspace, youtube, last.fm) are an Ice­landic reg­gae band who attained con­sid­er­able fame in Ice­land and beyond, with their debut album win­ning sev­eral awards. They’re a curi­ous admix­ture of medieval Ice­landic sagas and Jamaica’s music gift of reg­gae.

Those of you on twit­ter can fol­low them at @hjalmarband.

Rec­om­mended lis­ten­ing:
Múm
Ami­ina
Emilíana Tor­rini
Jóhann Jóhanns­son
Ólafur Arnalds

More read­ing:
The 100 Best Ice­landic Pop and Rock Albums at MeFi
Wikipedia’s entry on the Music of Iceland