Netherlands - Zeeland and western North Brabant

 

A new year and a new country, my home country, the Netherlands.  First  of all a clarification: the official name of the country is the Netherlands.  Holland are only the 2 provinces of North and South Holland in the west, which contain the main urban centres of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, but still exclude large parts of the country.  Calling the whole country Holland is equivalent to calling the United Kingdom England.  Secondly the nationality and language of its citizens should be Netherlanders and Netherlandish respectively.  The term Dutch originates from a common Roman term referring to the Babarian tribes north of the Alps and still finds itself in the German name of their country Deutschland, but we'll stick to the more commonly used Dutch for both the nationality and the language.

We begin our musical journey through the country in the southwest in the province of Zeeland.  Jazz saxophonist Paul van der Feen and his 7 brothers and sisters grew up in a musical family in the the pretty seaside town of Middelburg.  They all started playing music from an early age and began performing when still in their teens during the 1990's.  Most notably they performed as the Paul van der Feen Quartet with Paul being joined by his brothers Mark, Matthijs and Clemens.  Here's an extract of them performing a live gig in Amsterdam:

In 1978 Dutch instrumental music ensemble Flairck was born around guitar virtuoso Erik Visser, who was actually born in Indonesia, but moved with his family to Ulvenhout in the province of North Brabant, where he grew up.  The band played a blend of folk, jazz and chamber influenced music and were very successful and productive until about 2004.  This is the title track from their 1978 debut album Variaties op een Dame: 

In 2017 they re-formed under a completely changed personnel with some Belgian influences, including the already featured violinist Anouk Sanczuk, but without Erik Visser.  So essentially its a brand new band, but the philosophy remained the same.  The end of last year they released a new album called Back Alive!  Here's a track from the album, which is a good one to reinforce some Dutch stereotypes: Stoned Wedding:

Moving on to the city of Tilburg in North Brabant, where we come across folk band Wè-nun Henk, who were active between 1995 and about 2008.  They very much show off the folk traditions of their home region.  They only recorded 4 albums in their time including the 2002 album Bar.  Here's a a live recording of a song from the album called De Vagabond.  Apologies for the sound quality:

As we are just into the New Year here is Een Vrolijk Nieuwjaarslied (A happy New Year's song) from the same album:

On this note, a happy New Year to you all and see you next time in South Holland.  As usual you follow my virtual ramblings on my tripline map.