Elijah

Anyone asking who is Elijah usually gets two answers: the stage name known across European reggae festivals, and the Zurich musician behind it, Elia Gunnar Salomon. He was born on 20 August 1986 in Zurich, Switzerland, and grew up in that city, where his family background combined Italian roots with Norwegian and Swiss heritage ^[1]. The mix of languages and cultures around him in Zurich later became one of the defining marks of his songwriting.

Music entered his life early and from several directions at once. He learned to handle guitar, flute, and percussion rather than settling on a single instrument, a habit that later allowed him to build his recordings largely on his own ^[1]. Jamaican music reached Zurich through record shops, sound systems, and a small but committed local scene, and the teenage Salomon absorbed roots reggae, dub, and dancehall alongside the rap, blues, and Latin styles that circulated in the city ^[2].

By his late teens he was performing under the name Elijah, singing over riddims at local dances and working out how Swiss German, a dialect rarely heard in reggae, could sit on top of Jamaican rhythms. That experiment, unusual at the time, became his signature ^[1].

The first public breakthrough came in 2005, when Elijah placed second at the Swiss Singjay Contest, a competition for vocalists in the reggae and dancehall style ^[1]. The result put his name in front of promoters, and invitations followed, including appearances connected to Rototom Sunsplash, the large European reggae festival then held in Italy ^[2].

Around the same period he became a founding member of The Dubby Conquerors, a Zurich band that gave his songs a live roots-reggae backbone. With them he recorded his debut album, Beweg Di, released in 2007 and sung largely in Swiss German ^[1]. The record found an audience at home and attracted attention abroad, which was rare for dialect reggae, and the band toured steadily on the strength of it ^[2].

The decisive step came in 2008, when Elijah won the European Reggae Contest ^[1]. The prize opened stages across the continent and beyond, and in the years that followed he performed not only in Europe but also in Africa and Central America, carrying a Zurich-made take on Jamaican music to audiences who had never heard Swiss German before ^[2].

Any list of Elijah achievements has to start with his recordings. After Beweg Di, he released Eat Ripe Fruit in 2014, an album recorded in part at Tuff Gong Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, the facility founded by Bob Marley ^[1]. Working in Kingston connected him directly to the tradition he had studied from a distance in Zurich, and the album featured Jamaican musicians alongside his own playing ^[2].

Two years later came Dub Ripe Fruit (2016), a complete dub reworking of the album mixed by the British producer Joe Ariwa, with contributions from the Jamaican band Raging Fyah. It has been described as the first full dub album released by a Swiss artist ^[1]. The project confirmed his standing in the international roots scene, where dub credibility counts for a great deal, and reggae outlets across Europe covered the release ^[5].

In 2013 he had already founded his own label, One Camp Records, based in Zurich, which released his later work and supported the collective around him known as One Camp Crew ^[2]. Running his own label gave him control over his masters and his schedule, a decision that shaped the second half of his career. His fifth album, Salomon, arrived in 2022 with songs in Swiss German, English, and, for the first time, Italian, a nod to his family background; a companion set, Salomon In Dub, followed in 2023 ^[1].

Elijah writes and produces most of his material himself in his Zurich studio ^[2]. His base is roots reggae, but the records fold in dub, rap, blues, Latin rhythms, and West African music, including the sound of the kora, the West African harp, which he has worked into reggae arrangements ^[1]. The result is recognizably Jamaican in structure yet unmistakably shaped by a European city where five languages can be heard on one tram.

Language is the most distinctive tool in his kit. He performs in Swiss German, English, Jamaican Patois, Italian, and Spanish, often moving between them across a single album ^[1]. Singing reggae in Zurich dialect was a gamble when he started, since dialect music risked sounding provincial, but he treated Swiss German as simply another rhythm-bearing language, and audiences abroad accepted it as part of the sound rather than a novelty ^[2].

On stage and on record he has collaborated widely, including work connected to established Jamaican artists such as Queen Ifrica, and he has kept close ties to musicians in Kingston since the Tuff Gong sessions ^[1]. Reviewers in the reggae press have tended to place him among the leading European voices of the roots revival generation ^[5].

In the summer of 2024, Elijah made news well outside the music pages. He removed his entire catalogue from Spotify to protest the low royalties that streaming pays to artists, arguing that independent Swiss musicians could not earn a sustainable income under the platform's payout model ^[1]. Swiss media, including the public broadcaster SRF, reported on the withdrawal and on the wider debate about streaming economics that it fed ^[4].

He encouraged listeners to find his music on platforms he considered fairer to artists, such as Bandcamp, and framed the move as a demand for structural change rather than a personal grievance ^[4]. Because he owned his recordings through One Camp Records, he could act where major-label artists could not, and his protest was cited by other musicians weighing similar steps ^[2].

The stance fit a career-long pattern. From founding his own label to keeping production in his own studio, Elijah has consistently traded reach for independence, and the Spotify decision made that trade explicit in front of a national audience ^[1].

Any fair Elijah biography has to weigh two contributions: the music and the example. Musically, he proved that Swiss German could carry roots reggae to international stages, and his run of albums from Beweg Di to Salomon In Dub gave Switzerland a reggae discography with genuine Jamaican connections, from Tuff Gong tapes to a Joe Ariwa dub set ^[1]. Younger Swiss artists working in dialect, in reggae and beyond, operate in a space he helped open ^[2].

As a label owner and advocate, he became a reference point in the European conversation about how streaming pays, or fails to pay, independent musicians ^[4]. His 2024 Spotify withdrawal remains one of the clearest artist-led statements on the issue to come out of Switzerland.

Still active as a performer, with concert dates continuing at Swiss venues into the mid 2020s, he remains based in Zurich and continues to release music through One Camp Records ^[3]. Among the simplest Elijah facts is also the most telling one: two decades after a second-place finish at a national singjay contest, he still answers to no label but his own ^[2].