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Jazz, blues, and world music

At home, in the 1950's and 60's, the kind of music depended on the floor. What? Yes, my grandparents, living in the ground floor apartment, had a collection of lp's with classical music. Most of them had the yellow label of the Deutsche Grammaphon Geselschaft^✶. At the first floor, my parents' music was mainly jazz, be-bop and cool of the forties and fifties. Sometimes, my father explained us how the music was made, how the musicians improvised one after the other on the theme that was put forward in the introducing bars of the song.

Incredible as it may now seem in our culture that has music (or muzak) everywhere, my sister and I didn't have our own means of listening to music till we left home to go to university in another town (Ghent) at the age of 17. Once I had my own place, I got me a turntable and starting buying long-playings (I never had many 45 rpm disks). My first records were Blind Faith^✶, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin... Hard Rock and Blues. Also some Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Incredible String Band^✶ , Donovan, and soon Dr. John, Tom Waits, Carlos Santana, Bob Marley, Burning Spear^✶.

The interest for jazz continued, with the contemporary musicians of the 1960's and 70's, Miles Davis, Rahsaan Kirk, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Dollar Brand, John McLaughlin^✶ and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Soft Machine. Some of my top records in those days were The Swiss Movement ^✶ (Les McCann & friends), Bitches Brew (Miles Davis), Everywhere Calypso (Sonny Rollins). Earlier on, Frank Zappa had already made a lasting impression with his irreverend mix of all kinds of music, and particularly with his parodies that are often better than the original.

The propagation in Belgium of so-called world music, mainly African and Asian, was greatly helped by the succession of Sfinx Festivals^✶ in Boechout near Antwerp. The organisers of this festival (each year at the last weekend of July) were very inventive in inviting quite unknown artists from West Africa, South America, South Asia, etc. to perform at this alternative place with a strong family atmosphere. Salif Keita came here several times, and made a lasting impression, not only on me... Other names that are now big include: Youssou N'Dour, Sun Ra Orkestra, Gilberto Gil, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Cheb Khaled, Femi Kuti...

When we arrived for the first time from Brazil, after Touché had to make a painful selection of her belongings, one of the heaviest bags was the one with her collection of Brazilian music. It brought about an enrichment of my musical horizons with the broad variety of what Brazilian musicians create. As usual with anything Brazilian, it is a mixture of different cultures and continents. Among our favourites are Marisa Monte, Tom Jobim, Maria Bethania, Cassia Eller^✶, Vinicius de Moraes,... Finally, there is also tango with Astor Piazzola, Bajofondo^✶, Melingo^✶, and fado with Mariza.