Only Danish performance in 2026
Since Fantastic Negrito took the stage at last year's Tønder Festival with his own particular blend of old-school blues, funk and R&B, and made such an impression on the audience, we naturally had to invite him back this year.
The 57 year-old musician whose everyday name is Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz grew up in an orthodox Muslim family in USA. As a young man he moved to Oakland, where he met hiphop, punk and funk, but he reverted to his musical roots: the Mississippi blues and the Afroamerican music traditions.
He released his first album in 1996, gaining a record contract under the name of Xavier. Life took a dramatic turn in 1999, when he was involved in a car crash that almost killed him and which cost him his guitar-playing ability.15 years later, he reinvented himself as Fantastic Negrito with an album of the same name in 2014. The following year, he won the American Tiny Desk Contest, sponsored by National Public Radio, NPR. Since then, he has won three Grammies in the Best Contemporary Blues Album category, most recently in 2021 with the album Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (2020).
Fantastic Negrito has a large output. Among recent releases is the album White Jesus Black Problems from 2022, inspired by his ancestral history in Virginia in the 1750s and the tale of a romance between a white woman and a black slave. In 2023 came the album Grandfather Courage, followed by the latest, Son of a Broken Man in 2024.
At this year's Tønder Festival, Fantastic Negrito will again perform with his band, in their only Danish performance in 2026.
