Windmills and World Music
The Netherlands as musical gateway to Europe
by Stan Rijven
Venues: African feeling
Suspect or not, the world scene is flourishing, especially in Amsterdam. Starting in the seventies the Mozes & Aäron Church and Royal Tropical Institute regularly hosted concerts of classical Indian music. The pop temples Paradiso and Milky Way (De Melkweg) have taken over their role as prominent centres of world music. In 1982 Paradiso launches the series Moluccan Moods: Moluccan groups living in the Netherlands begin playing for new audiences and in 1983 it is supplemented by the series called African Feeling, in which King Sunny Adé, Salif Keita and Youssou N’Dour made their Dutch debuts. A year later North African music gets a regular spot, a tradition that has continued to this day during the monthly Nuit de Maghreb.
Paradiso’s competitor Milky Way, became the motor behind the African pop scene, with its African Roots Night. Congolese soukous king Franco gave both his Dutch debut and international swansong concert there in January 1984 and October 1989, respectively. In the years that followed they extended their programming to include the crème de la crème from Latin America, Europe and the Arab world. The Royal Tropical Institute keeps on presenting serious world music, often in collaboration with such world music venues as Rasa (Utrecht), Korzo (The Hague) and the WMDC (Rotterdam). When even the illustrious Amsterdam Concertgebouw starts programming world music in between its Bach and Mahler series (at the end of the nineteen nineties), it would appear that the emancipation of our genre is complete, at least when it comes to venues where it may be performed.
 Festivals: From Tong Tong to Tangomagia
The African Roots Festival launched by the Milky Way in 1983, changed its name
to World Roots (1987) and then again to Amsterdam Roots (1997); changes that illustrate how the focus had shifted from Africa to a global perspective, and then back to a local one. Dunya (Rotterdam, since 1978), Music Meeting (Nijmegen, since 1985) and Festival Mundial (Tilburg, since 1988) opted long ago for a global approach. Events with a local look started appearing in the nineties, that included Tangomagia (Amsterdam), the International Gypsy Festival (Tilburg) and the Joods Muziek (Jewish Music) Festival (Amsterdam).
Furthermore, there is the largest annual world music festival, the Rotterdam Summer Carnival, with 900 thousand visitors, and Holland’s oldest world music festival - the Pasar Malam c.q. Tong Tong Festival in the Hague which has been a meeting place for Indonesian (music) culture. The 2008 edition is celebrating its 50th birthday.
 Media: Reflection
Whether or not the famous Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891-1960) - the man who coined the term ethnomusicology and put gamelan music on the world map - would have embraced these developments, remains a good question. The fact remains that today the Netherlands is the only country in the world with a conservatory that has a world music department (Rotterdam).
At another level there is still somewhat scant media attention for world music. The Dutch counterparts to the British magazines Folk Roots and Songlines were Afr ika (1986-1987) and Wereldmuziek (1989-1990), Oye Listen (1993 - 2003), Beyond (2007) and Mixed (2007). The latter two merged in 2008. New Folk Sounds (formerly Jan Viool) is the only publication to have survived since the nineteen seventies.
In the daily newspapers world music has conquered a small niche. Dutch public radio programs world music on its national Radio 6 network and on the internet with NPS Output.
Labels: Songs and sound
For a long time Dutch record companies had little interest in music from non-western countries, unless it had to do with Holland’s own colonial history. Dureco and CNR specialised in releasing popular music from Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles. Multinational Philips produced records worldwide, but in its own country it mainly released mainstream albums such as those by Malando and Los Paragayos. However, in a small format, namely the vinyl EP, Philips was a pioneer. With the catchy slogan ‘Songs and sound the world ar ound’ the label released a series of recordings in the nineties sixties in ‘A series of sounds picked up by a wa ndering microphone in var ious par ts of the world’. Even then the combination of music from the Congo on the A-side and Morocco on the B-side was considered exotic: ‘The vivid evocation on this record perpetuates some of the most original music in the world. Indigenous music fr om such widely separa ted points in Afr ica as the Belgian Congo and South Morocco. Music fr om the depths of dar k jungles and forests and the sun-scorched, empty va stness of the desert.’ (4)
Under the influence of the folk music revival, the first independent Dutch world labels, founded in the seventies, were Munich Records, Music & Words and PAN Records. Later the accent shifted from folk music alone to music from every corner of the globe. Once such labels as Coast to Coast, Hippo, Lucho, Otrabanda and World Connection join the ranks, does the Dutch world scene really start turning the windmills.
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