Swedish soulful singer and musician, from Gothenburg, Sweden. Real name Jonathan Bäckelie, he is part oft the Gothenburg Jazz Hipsters, a collective of various people that has got jazz, soul and electronic sounds at the top of their agenda, sometimes referred to as the 'Gonkyberg' scene.
Musically, he can be described as a lovely blend of vocal based soul, bossa nova, broken beats, jazz and Latin dipped funkiness.
He has sung since his childhood, writing his first song in age of three, gaining experience in the church choir and touring with his father, who’s a pastor, playing and singing together when his father was out preaching. In fifth grade he came in contact with the rave culture that changed his life. Soon he was not only writing vocal based tracks but also started to experiment with his synthesizer.
In college he discovered jazz, which started to infiltrate his music more and more. Meanwhile he started to make contact with three other guys at his musical college, these fellows where also deep into the electronic music and jazz: Andreas Saag, Christoffer Berg (aka Hird, and Paul Lachenardière. College was extremely developing for him.
His girlfriend, Mimi Terris, introduced Latin American music and its great artists to him, especially Brazilian singer Elis Regina, and she played a new large musical and vocal model role to him after the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. While many jazz musicians have tried to develop their sound by adding electronic elements, it has been the other way around for Bäckelie, as he comes from the electronic tradition and has later on started to integrate jazz into his music.
His music is currently divided into several projects: Ernesto for the more jazz integrated stuff, Pinku Vääty and Jong Tan is more electronica – Pinku is of the more happy kind and Jong Tan is modal and soft. Tantan is another project in the instrumental broken beat tradition.