I’m starting today with a project that I’ve been dreaming of for the past year. Namely, I’m going to find people who, in this modern age, still play folk music. I want to interview them, find out how they came about to be playing this music, hear what this music means to them, learn the stories behind this music that resonate for their whole community, and then to film them playing their music!
A little about myself: I’m a cultural mutt (Chinese-Californian by upbringing, living the past 20 years in Germany and the Netherlands), who has found a home and professional life in Western classical music. I see the ultimate expression of roots in how people make music together, especially in communities where everyone knows the same songs, pieces, dances, background of stories, etc. To me, this type of music-making is like bundles of code that, if delved into and deciphered, provides views straight into the heart and lifestyles of old communities.
The Netherlands will be be my starting point. I received a prize from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra last year to make a CD of pieces inspired by folk music from around the world. One of the pieces on this CD is a work that I have commissioned from the Dutch composer, Fant de Kanter. I have asked Fant to travel with me across the Netherlands to look for the folk music still being played in this country, and to write a piece for me inspired by the music that we hear.
The Netherlands is – like many societies that have modernized so quickly post-WWII – filled with contradictions. On the one hand, it is known to the outside world for its tolerance, openness and egalitarianism. And on the other hand, it is a small, proud country that has for large segments of time lived in quite contented isolation from the non-Dutch-speaking rest of the world. Many communities, no matter what the historical moment in time, lived as literal or nearly-literal islands: there are still 5 inhabited islands in the Netherlands, and up through the middle of the 20th-century, when the North Sea was dammed off from a large swath of the Western country, there were many more islands and island communities. Other parts of the country, though not surrounded by water, were isolated by other features: language (the Netherlands knows not only countless dialects, but also a separate language spoken by an entire province in the north, Friesland); religion (Catholics had their own TV station and political party until very recent history, and Protestants have splintered off into innumerable often bitterly-divided fractions and denominations); geography/profession (much of the Netherlands lived outside of the cities until recent times, and was engaged in fishing and farming, both professions keeping people tied to their specific region).
I will travel to some of these old communities to see how much of their traditional music is still being played, to hear how people feel about the chances of their old traditions continuing in modern times, and to see how this music is being passed on to or adapted by the younger generation.
The Netherlands has also known several waves of ethnic diversification over the course of its history. In the 17th-century, during the Dutch Golden Age, the Netherlands participated in the European frenzy to acquire as many colonies in resource-rich areas of the globe as possible. To this day, the Kingdom of the Netherlands still includes the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Saint-Maarten. Amongst the largest current population of non-Caucasians in the Netherlands are people of from the former Dutch colonies of Indonesia and Suriname. I will interview people from these earlier waves of immigration to the Netherlands to hear what they identify as their ‘own’ music: do they still play the music from their traditional communities; or has their old music has become mixed with the music of their new homeland; or do they make no distinction between their own music and that of mainstream Dutch society?
More recently immigrants come from Turkey and Morocco. The first generation was invited to the Netherlands in the 1950’s to provide labor in the reconstruction of the country, devastated by the war. Taken together, these groups now make up just under 5% of the Dutch population. The Netherlands is now seeing the children of the original immigrants coming of age in this country, with heated discussions surrounding the question of their integration and its impact upon the country’s identity as a whole. I will interview members of these communities and hear of their relationship to the traditions and music of their country of origin, and I will contrast the stories of the 1st generation and 2nd generation, noting if there is any difference in how they balance between adapting or maintaining their traditions while living in the Netherlands.
I will also interview members of the newest groups of immigrants to the Netherlands – for instance, Syrian asylum-seekers fleeing the recent war in their homeland – to hear what musics they have brought with them from their home countries.
I am immensely excited to start diving into these sounds and stories, and to start posting for everyone to discover these sounds and stories alongside of me. Stay tuned for the first videos in upcoming weeks!