Sofia Jannok is singing for a few thousand students at China's Peking University in Beijing.
Jannok: "I am a Sami girl. Sami is the indigenous people of Sweden. It's a minority and of course my parents are Sami. So the language we speak at home-my mother tongue-is Sami. It's very different from Sweden. The Sami singing tradition is the Joik. So that's an influence. I don't do it traditionally, but I like to take the influences from it."
About a year ago, Sofia teamed up with the Peter Tikkanen Trio. Her vocals and the trio's bass, drums, and piano make a musical hybrid of Sami Joiking and jazz.
Jannok: "Actually I was trained in both. I went to Sami schools and Sami kindegarten until I was twelve years old and after that comes Swedish schools. So therefore I got the Pop and Jazz tradition as well. The mix between Sami and this Pop and Jazz was natural for me."
Sofia is one of a few Swedish acts to play Beijing this year. Export Music Sweden, a group that promotes Swedish music abroad, paid for her tour. Holger Carlsson is Sofia's tour manager with Export Music Sweden.
Carlsson: "Export Music Sweden has been supporting Swedish bands for quite some time. China has been a big challenge for them because they didn't really know what to expect from the Chinese audience. We know that modern music is still a very small piece of the Chinese everyday life. But we thought that it would be good this year to go in and do a few things
Carlsson says- Export Music Sweden is sending-over musicians like Sofia, to build a name for Sweden- as a major exporter of pop-culture.
Carlsson: "Sweden wants to be a popular country in many ways. And if we can find a way to combine to strengthen Sweden's brand name in China and at the same time pave the way for whenever the modern music market really kicks off in China. We think there's definitely a place for Swedish music cause Swedish music is present in so many other countries. Why not China?"
After Sofia's concert at Peking University, Dong Nan, a local musician, says that young Chinese are increasingly interested in foreign musical traditions.
Nan: "Before maybe we weren't so familiar, but now we are. We have movies, internet, and CDs coming in. And we Chinese often travel abroad. For example I've been all over Europe and to the UK. So I understand their native culture and local customs."
Ten years ago, most Peking University students probably wouldn't even have heard of ABBA, Sweden's biggest musical export to date, let alone the ancient folk music of one of Sweden's ethnic minorities.
For The World, I'm Will Freeman in Beijing.
