Windmills and World Music
The Netherlands as musical gateway to Europe
by Stan Rijven
Indonesia
That which makes the Netherlands distinct in the music world, and even unique, is the musical heritage of its former colonies of Indonesia and Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles, although politically speaking, Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao are still technically part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Tens of thousands of emigrants were repatriated or came to the Netherlands for the first time after Indonesian independence in 1949. The Hague became the most important centre for Indonesian (music) culture. It was there that Indo-rock was born, an electric guitar style that mixed sweet Asian melodies with rough and ready American rock ‘n roll. In so doing it laid the basis for the Dutch pop scene. Such bands as The Tielman Brothers, The Javalins and The Hot Jumpers faded into the background in the sixties with the arrival of the British beat boom. Incidentally, Indo-rock bands can still be heard every year at the Pasar Malam festival in The Hague, where kroncong, gamelan and Hawaiian music groups also perform.
Politically and culturally speaking, the Moluccas (an island group in presentday Indonesia) form a separate story. Their music contains Polynesian influences and has a strong vocal tradition. In the nineteen eighties the Moluccan Moods Orchestra was the best known Moluccan pop group. At present Boi Akih adventurously explores that vocal tradition and recently other fusions of music from the Indonesian tradition.
Surinam
Migrants from Surinam exercised an enormous influence on the renewal of the Dutch music world. Even before the Second World War, trumpeter Teddy Cotton and saxophonist Kid Dynamite were innovators in jazz circles. In the nineteen fifties they were the talk of the town and played in such clubs as the Casablanca. Just down the road in Amsterdam, Max Woiski, Sr. ran his own club. This singer scored several hits, one of which was Bruine Bonen met Rijst. (Brown Beans with Rice)
Surinamese music has a wider scope and appeal after Surinam’s independence in 1975. Flutist Ronald Snijders develops his own style of Suri-jazz and Suri-funk. The Surinam Music Ensemble and Fra Fra Sound invent Paramaribop which blends elements of Afro- Surinamese, Caribbean and Afro-American traditions. Trumpeter Stan Lokhin emerges as the driving force behind kaseko, a fusion of jazz and calypso with Afro-Surinamese influences. As arranger, producer and often as player, Lokhin recorded countless kaseko albums with bands that included The Happy Boys, The Twinkle Stars and Lieve Hugo. Lieve Hugo grew in stature into the ‘the Bob Marley of Surinam’, but died 1975, just before his big breakthrough.  Since then Trafassi, Carlo Jones, Yakkie Famirie and De Nazaten along with occasional forays by Fra Fra Sound, have kept the kaseko tradition alive. The repertoires of singers Dhroe Nankoe and Raj Mohan recall the connection with their motherland India, when the Netherlands and England (at the end of the nineteenth century) began exchanging contract labourers in their erstwhile colonies.
Netherlands Antilles
For quite some time very little was known about the music of the Netherlands Antilles outside of the islands themselves. Recently, efforts made by music historian Tim de Wolf are starting to change that. His meticulous collecting and restoration of original recordings made there in the fifties and sixties, document an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music history. Music of the fifties can be heard on the seminal Riba Dempel album. (6)
The first contacts the Dutch had with its music were in the islands themselves during the colonial period. It was not until after 1985, when Shell oil closed its refinery on Curaçao, that large scale migration to the Netherlands took place. Dutch Antillean musicians were often engaged in the salsa, jazz and soul scenes.
The first pioneer to branch out into other musical fields in the eighties and early nineties was bassist, composer and arranger Eric Calmes. He started his own group Zaminokitaki, which was a breeding ground for other musicians exploring the wide variety of Antillean styles, not just limited to salsa and merengue, such as tumba, and various other kinds of crossovers of Afro-Caribbean music. Izaline Calister, Randel Corsen and Calmes went on to fuse this tradition in the Netherlands with elements of jazz, pop and world. In Randal Corsen’s Tumbábo, his sixteen piece big band, Randal Corsen pays homage to Dutch Caribbean music by some of its greatest composers including Rignald Recordino, Oswin ‘Chin’ Behilia, Macario Prudencia and Rudy Plaate.
|
