All About Music Again

ALL ABOUT MUSIC AGAIN

It belongs to the Dutch culture that you are crazy about classical music. My mother and her brother Dennis both had piano lessons for 8 years. Dennis even went to the conservatory. Both played piano constantly. My younger years were filled with classical music, it was all my brother and I heard. Dennis sometimes gave concerts for the whole street on our porch in our house in the Dutch East Indies. Our first contact with other types of music was aboard the troopship, the Amhurst Victory. After the surrender and during the attacks of the Indonesian rebels, we went on board of this ship from Samarang to Batavia (Jakarta).
Songs like: Don’t fence me in and Give me five minutes more, all those war songs sang by the English we thought were great. Like Vera Lynn, it brought a new world to me, one that was cheerful and witty and had something to do with being free and finally shaking all the worries from your body and having fun again and live again. Since that time we got to know the music of Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Xavier Gugat and many others.
In camp Tjideng in Batavia, where we waited for transport to Holland, we went every week to the open air cinema at the camp, seeing movies with Diana Durbin, Shirley Tempel and many other famous stars. We also listened to upbeat music and after the sadness around us, this was a very uplifting experience.
In our teens we also swoon to the music and dancing close together. At that time you went to dance class and you were taught ballroom dancing like the foxtrot, the waltz, the chachacha, the tango, etc. Kuipers was the biggest dance club, which yearly gave a grand ball at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen with three different bands. We went there in pretty party dresses with pettycoats and high heels. Scheveningen was our entertainment center, the club of Pia Beck, dixiland bands and more. When I got a boyfriend, who was a naval cadet there were even more parties and balls also in Nijenrode. It was a great time with music of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Errol Garner, Frank Sinatra and many more. Then came the time with real jazz, after that the blues, rock and roll, etc.
At the Rijnland high school, we also had a grand ball at the end of every school year, girls wearing evening dresses and the boys wearing tuxedo’s.
Peter Schilperoort and his band (the Dutch Swing College Band) played there as were many others. At school there also were some boys who could play the boogie woogie very well.
Now about 55 years later, when everything is almost over, we find on the computer on You-tube this music and with this music all our memories of those wonderful 8 years are coming back. Lovely memories of great music, which I cherish.
A lot has happened in those 55 years, think of all these new currents of great bands, the Beatles, Elvis, Joe Cocker, The Rolling Stones, Woodstock, Queen, Motown, Soul, Andy Williams, Tom Jones and many more. The whole range of new movements erupted also in films and the musical of Mash and Hair, too much to mention. All these happy developments made me a real music lover of all types of music that crossed my life these 55 years and left me with many wonderful memories.
Fortunately there is a new range of young talent now like Norah Jones, Katie Meluah, Peter Cincottie, Michael Buble, Madeleine Peroux and Dianne Krall. We can still enjoy this all as well as the classical music and that is what we do with heart and soul.
Dinkie