Kim J. Henriksen

Kim Jan Henriksen (also known as Kimo, born 28 October 1960) is a Danish Esperantist singer-musician. 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. Kim Henriksen and his Polish-born wife speak Esperanto at home and are raising their son as a second-generation Esperanto native speaker. Henriksen's enthusiastic musicianship on behalf of Esperanto and cross-cultural understanding through rock music has earned him popularity both in Europe and America.

Arika Okrent's characterization American linguist Arika Okrent notes:

"[Henriksen] appeared not to appreciate how bizarre it was to be a native speaker of an invented language. Esperanto was the medium of his parents' relationship and of the entire home life of their family.

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. But he considered Esperanto his true mother tongue. For Kimo, Esperanto was a completely normal fact of life in the same way that Polish would have been if both of his parents had been Polish. Kimo didn't choose to learn Esperanto, nor did his son, but everyone else at the conference did. Somewhere along the way they'd decided it worth their time to learn this utopian pipe-dream language." The band sings songs in several languages — Danish, English, French, Twi and Spanish. He has been on the executive of the Esperanto Club of Malmö since 2007, where he often teaches introductory and intermediate courses in Esperanto.