Career
From his Polish-born mother Bogumiła Maria Henriksen and Danish-born father Kai L. Henriksen he learned Esperanto as a child, becoming prominent in the Esperanto youth movement and in the world of Esperanto rock music in the 1980s and 1990s. Henriksen"s enthusiastic musicianship on behalf of Esperanto and cross-cultural understanding through rock music has earned him popularity both in Europe and America. American linguist Arika Okrent notes:
" appeared not to appreciate how bizarre it was to be a native speaker of an invented language.
"Before you start getting indignant on his behalf, know that growing up he had plenty of contact with the world outside his home and learned to speak Danish as a native too.
Somewhere along the way they"d decided it worth their time to learn this utopian pipe-dream language."
He composed and sang several of the most popular songs of the Esperanto rock music group Sola. In autumn 2005 he co-founded the Hotel Desperado ensemble with Brian Laustsen, Nis Bramsen and Mark Dziwornu from among the Esperanto Desperado group, a group with which he still performs.
Other current band members are Thierry Boisdon and David-Emil Wickström. The band sings songs in several languages — Danish, English, French, Twi and Spanish.
Their music incorporates elements of flamenco, afro, blues, folk, Balkan and ska.
Henriksen was president of the Danish Esperanto Youth Organization, president of the Danish Esperanto Society from 1995 till 2002 and president of the Copenhagen Esperanto Club from 2005 till 2007. He was instrumental in the founding and continued operations of the Sunda esperanto agado, a group that actively aids mutual Øresund-area cooperation among Esperanto clubs from Copenhagen and Helsingborg in Denmark and clubs from Malmö and Lund in Sweden. He has been on the executive of the Esperanto Club of Malmö since 2007, where he often teaches introductory and intermediate courses in Esperanto.
