Belgium - Wallonia

 Belgium!  The country of the best chips in the world, with mussels(!), Chocolate (!), a bewildering range of weird and wonderful beers and a language split down the middle resulting in endless squabbles.  To the Dutch and French they are the butt of endless jokes, but they are an endearing lot though.  

We start our journey through this country in the French speaking part of the country in Wallonia. Our first stop is in the far east of the country in the province of Limbourg, which the folk band Cecilia call their home.  They are a trio of hurdy gurdy, bagpipes and accordion churning out cheerful balfolk or Boombal with influences from Ireland to the Balkans and everything in between.  This is the opening tune from their 2018 album Pastourelle called De Zwarte Beek - Mols Hoop:

Belgium has a long and proud and tradition in Jazz beginning with Romani-French Jazz guitarist and composer Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), who was born in Liberchie, just north of Charleroi.  He was the first major talent of the genre to emerge from Europe and remains the most significant.  He collaborated with some of the greats of his era, including Stéphane Grapelli, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter and Duke Ellington.  Sadly he died too early at the age of 43 from a stroke.  Here's a short summary of his life:

And here's a tune with his Quintet Hot Club de France with Grapelli on violin:

Following in Django's footsteps is Jazz singer, flutist and composer Melanie de Biasio from Charleroi (must be something in the water around there), who plays a much more contemporary style of jazz combined at times with elements of prog rock and singing in English.  The 42 year old has been nominated for and awarded numerous prestigious awards for her music.  Here's a sensual performance of her song With All My Love from her 2013 album No Deal.  Gives me goosebumps this!

This song called All My Worlds is from her to date latest
album Lilies, released in 2017:

I'm not sure where the crazy Balkanik band Kermesz a L'Est are based, but given that they toured this summer on bicycle-like contraptions around Mons and Hainault, I assume that is their home region.  According to their own description they fuse Balkan tunes with metal, math rock, electro and free jazz all infused with a healthy dose of humour.  Their live performances are livewire sessions of anarchy complete with long hair, beards, leather jackets and beer.  I'm looking forward to catching up with them at some stage, somewhere.

In the meantime we have to content ourselves with just listening to their recordings.  They released an album in April called RDS-202 after the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, and it sure is explosive.  It is also available as a pay as you feel like download on bandcamp.  So go on treat yourselves!  Here's the full-length album on YouTube:

And here just a flavour of one of their live performances:

That's it from Wallonia, next stop Brussels.  As usual you can follow my virtual ramblings on my Tripline map.