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High Road to Culture in Flanders and the Netherlands
The mother of the Canadian author Michael Ondaatje (1943) descended from Jan Frans Gratiaen (1727-1788) from Bruges, founding father of a Dutch Burgher dynasty in Ceylon. The author follows his life and career.
The concept of retro glamour pop with a dance beat, fronted by a voluptuous fifties-look vamp, that’s Caro Emerald (Amsterdam, 1981). In autumn 2014 she will be on tour in Great-Britain.
Dutch singer-songwriter Blaudzun had a definitive breakthrough in 2014 and quickly became the darling of the Dutch pop critics who showed off their good taste. In his own country he was already a universally-known phenomenon, but now he is...
In history, Dutch windmills are often a symbol of freedom, loyalty to the fatherland and pride in the past. Lugard Mutsaers describes how a useful tool became a national icon.
The first Nits single, ‘Yes or No', was released in 1977, the year in which punk made its breakthrough on the international music scene. From that moment it was clear: The Nits were not punk, but an arty band influenced by the New Wave scen...
The idea that a rock group from the Low Countries might attract large crowds elsewhere has become less and less bizarre in recent years. The world's become smaller because of the spread of music via the internet, which means that fame is no...
Everywhere they go, The Ex make the impossible possible by following the age-old adage ‘do it yourself' (‘…because no-one else will do it for you'). An American reviewer once described their sound as ‘a beautiful frenzy', a phrase from the ...
It took the Flemish pop musician Bert Ostyn (born 1981) ten years to reach the stage of consolidation. His group Absynthe Minded knows its classics. Rather than running through the genres or going for pastiches the group makes its own synth...
Almost half a century ago Bob Dylan was the fuse that ignited the powder keg of pop music. Thanks to Dylan, Flemish and Dutch folk movements rediscovered their regional traditions. Protest singers came and went. Dylan was translated, imitat...
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture: that well-known witticism attributed to various celebrities is generally used by musicians to put music journalism and criticism into perspective. Or to brush them aside, as in the ca...
Join us in bidding goodbye to 2023 with some of the most surprising stories we have published this year about the history of Flanders and the Netherlands.
