SAFRI DUO

Safri Duo put two percussionists at the heart of dance music: Uffe Savery and Morten Friis combine Danish percussion traditions with electronic beats. What now gets straight into your legs began with classical music and a fine sense of rhythm.

Savery and Friis met as boys in the Tivoli-Garden and both later studied at the Royal Danish Conservatory. As a classical percussion duo, they arranged works for their instruments, released several albums in the 1990s and performed internationally. Around the turn of the millennium, they changed direction: alongside producer Michael Parsberg, they found a sound combining live percussion, trance and electronic dance music.

That combination produced “Played-A-Live (The Bongo Song)”, which made Safri Duo known across Europe. In 2001, the track reached number two in the German singles chart and topped the charts in Switzerland and Denmark. They developed the sound further on the album “Episode II”; later that year, they appeared on stage with Aqua at the Eurovision Song Contest in Copenhagen. In 2002, they received an Echo for International Dance Single of the Year.

Later, “Origins” brought acoustic percussion back to the fore, complemented by world music influences. Their collaboration with twocolors and Chris de Sarandy on “Cynical” showed in 2023 that the duo also work with a younger generation of electronic acts. On stage, the combination of electronic music and live percussion remains their trademark.