The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nils Kercher has lived in a potpourri of music since his childhood.
He starts learning the violin at an early age.
As a teenager he has to make several attempts to convince his parents that he wants to play drums and soon after he discovers West African percussion.
He plays the drumkit in bands and can hardly wait until he finally has his high school diploma in his pocket to travel to West Africa to learn more about various instruments and singing.
He loves the musicality that he encounters everywhere and that "tastes good" in one of Guinea's languages and thus has a strong bodily aspect.
Out of this appetite he also begins to play Kora, an African harp, and develops his very own musical style from all these colours, which can be heard on three different albums: "Rhythms of Silence", "Ancient Intimations" and "SUKU-Your Life is Your Poem", which the British Songlines magazine aptly describes as "this is not a copy and paste exercise, but genuine fusion".
No matter what unusual combination of instruments he's on the road with, he expresses his own inner world with a very personal mixture of spices.
His latest album "Can You smell The Rain“ (2020) let him unpack his old guitar again, telling stories that link the personal with the global, as if on a leisurely dinner with good friends. Linked to his versatile musical background this results in a unique combination of sound, lyrics and a captivating urban groove.
Nils’ voice is a travelogue of our time.
Here you find various interviews with Nils Kercher in German language (please copy the text into an online translator such as deepl to read in your language):
in depth Interview (2013) with Nils Kercher by Thoralf Koss @musikreviews
interview with Nils Kercher to the release of his new album Can You Smell The Rain (2020) by Dylan Cem Akalin / General-Anzeiger Bonn
Interview with Nils Kercher to the release of the album SUKU (2016) by Rolf Stein / Kreiszeitung
in depth interview with Nils Kercher (2012) by music author and ethnologist Lothar A. Heinrich
interview with Nils Kercher (2016) broadcasted by public radio station Deutschlandfunk, by Daniel Hauser
