Our double-package No. 2 with FANTA 4 is all about funky sounds and great texts. The Bernese-dialect groovers Troubas Kater make a wonderful addition to the evening.

In rap there’s a great deal to say, and this genre turns a stream of words into a genuine musical instrument. Die Fantastische Vier have continually developed their flow and tonality over 35 years, but it’s also the content that counts. And that’s what the Stuttgart lads still deliver – to the beat – explosive and right on the mark. Modern world music on a brass-band basis, funky, soulful, rhythmic, with the cryptic, effortlessly-rhymed dialect texts of rapper QC: that’s Troubas Kater from Bern. A band that really gets the audience going.

Christian Platz

With the kind support of the «Friends of Baloise Session»

Hip-hop is essentially a party culture that originally danced its way from city streets into the hit parades of the world. This was the route also taken by Die Fantastischen Vier and Steff la Cheffe.

When Die Fantastischen Vier, often shortened to FANTA 4 started up at the end of the 1980s, hip-hop was regarded by many as a flash in the pan. Nowadays, rap is fifty years old and the most successful form of pop music in the world. FANTA 4 are pioneers of the German-language variant of this art of spoken, rhythmic wordplay: street-smart but also in its intellectual prime, quick-witted and rhythmically strong. The same is true of Steff la Cheffe; she plumbs and exhausts the possibilities of Bernese German, stretches and bends the words to a danceable beat. Breathtaking.

Christian Platz

With the kind support of the «Friends of Baloise Session»

«Freitags ist sie nie da» (Fridays she is never there), but on the festival’s closing day, THEY were here: die Fantastischen Vier, Germany’s most successful hip-hop band. The Rappers Smudo, Michi, Thomas D. and And.Ypsilon presented their album «Viel» (Much) and with it they returned in customary freshness, with word plays and catchy grooves, to the stage. «Troy» is the name of  their single, which had already taken the charts by storm.

«Gute Musik» (Good Music) presented the 24-year-old Clueso with his band in the opening act. The closing evening of the festival promised two top-notch German-speaking formations with unbroken creativity and a rapping good closing party.

Andy Strässle