Swiss Music Prize 2020
The Swiss Music Prize is the most prestigious as well as lucrative accolade an artist in Switzerland can receive. Backed by the Federal Office of Culture, the award celebrates exceptional and innovative – though not necessarily commercially successful – work. Choosing from an extensive long-list of nominations, a jury of seven experts picks fourteen artists to be awarded CHF 25’000 each as well as one overall winner to receive CHF 100’000.-. Laurence Desarzens, incidentally, Swiss Music Export’s vice-president, is the chairwoman of the BAK jury!
This year’s winner of the Grand Prix Music – in other words, the overall winner – is the much-travelled singer, multi-instrumentalist and performance artist Erika Stucky. Born in San Francisco, she was aged nine when her family, in 1971, could stand it no longer to be away from their beloved mountains, and returned to Switzerland. Seemingly able to bend musical perspectives at will, Stucky has served up a steady stream of mad, wonderful and unclassifiable music ever since she toured Europe and Africa with the acapella group the Sophisticrats in the 1980s. Moving on with the yodelling post-new wave group Bubble Town, her combination of instruments and influences became progressively more daring. It included a trio with vocals and double tuba, a US tour in Carla Bley’s “opera” Escalator over the Hill, another tour with David Coulter’s Raindogs Ensemble and a group, Stucky Con Carne, which involved movies, reeds, glass harp and F.M. Einheit’s percussion and electronics. Erika Stucky is a unique voice – and a totally deserved winner of this award.
Amongst the other fourteen award winners, four acts are of very special interest to us here at Swiss Music Export, Martina Berther, Big Zis, Aïsha Devi, and Emilie Zoé.
E-bassist and multi-instrumentalist Martina Berther has been a leading part of quite a few bands featured in these pages. Today, she performs solo under the name Frida Stroom and is, amongst many other things, a member of the AUL collective, Sophie Hunger’s band and, alongside Béatrice Graf, the duo Ester Poly.
Big Zis is one of the most as important and expressive voices in the German Swiss rap scene. Rapping in Swiss German, she delights in parodying and subverting the clichés still all too often employed by her male colleagues. On 21 August saw the release of her new album „4xLove:2“.
Having begun her musical career as electronics producer Kate Wax, the classically trained soprano became Aïsha Devi Devi to develop a mesmerising and unique brand of psychedelic electronica reflecting her Nepalese family roots.
Emilie Zoé is a fearless singer/songwriter from Lausanne whose fiercely honest songs can go from a tender whisper to a visceral howl in a beat.
The remaining recipients of a Swiss Music Prize are Antoine Chessex, Christy Doran, André Ducret, Dani Häusler, Rudolf Kelterborn, Hans Koch, Nat Su, Francesco Piemontesi, Cyrill Schläpfer and Swiss Chamber Concerts.
Swiss Music Prize
Erika Stucky
Aïsha Devi
Big Zis
Emilie Zoé
Martina Berther
