Known as one the godfathers of the Iceland music scene, Sigtryggur "Siggi" Baldursson was a member of well known Icelandic group, The Sugarcubes. As the managing director of Iceland music, Baldursson has helped introduce the world to other well known Icelandic artists like Bjork and worked to help foster and mentor many other up and coming musicians. Baldursson sat down with Mark Wheat this weekend as part of the Iceland Airwaves Festival. Here are some highlights from their conversation.

When the festival first started, Baldursson wasn't sure how it would go.

"I thought it was a basically ill begotten gig. It was in an airport hanger and I thought, 'Who are these idiots? Why are they doing this?' But it was a humble beginning shall we say, but it was a different idea because in those days part of the idea came from a band called GusGus, which really wanted to get some hip people from the music business in the states to come and see them in Iceland, so they spoke to some friends of theirs at Icelandair at the time and decided to fly over a bunch of people from the states and throw together a little mini festival, which they did. And I actually played at that first gig in the hanger. That's a little known fact. I was part of a band called Grindwork, or Grintec in Icelandic which was me and Einar, my pal from The Sugarcubes and a guy called Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson who is a film composer and also the head of the pagan sect in Iceland.

The festival has grown over the last 20 years.

"It's become a wonderful discovery festival, because becoming to Iceland airways you have to be prepared to discover new stuff. You don't go here to hear your old favorite headliners from the past like the Sugarcubes, stuff like that (Laughs), but to discover new stuff. That's the beauty of it really. You can trust some of the new stuff you discover here, maybe not all the bands, but a few of them will be sort of headliners four years from now in some festival that you might be going to then, and that's the fun of it. And of course the special atmosphere here in Reykjavik is pretty special."

A change in ownership was good for the Iceland Airwaves Festival.

"The festival this year is in the hands of a promoter in Iceland called Sena Live, which is actually the actually the biggest single promoter of shows and they bring a special very professional attitude to this festival, but at the same time they are sort of taking it back to its roots as well and that was a very distinctive decision that they made. They wanted to take the essence and try and re capture a bit of the original essence of this festival."

On the song "Regina."

The song is about a famous journalist in Iceland called Regina and she was stationed in the Westman Islands for awhile and wrote these pieces from the Westman Islands that we thought were oftentimes funny and she was this elderly lady with a wicked sense of humor and would really sort of pull no punches when sort of tackling certain issues. It was quite something, and this is sort of a tribute to her.

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• The Current brings Iceland Airwaves to you