Music for the Soul

Very excited to share with you a new project I will start in 2017.
Even more excited: I am going to do it together with my dad 🙂

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My cradle stood in a room above a pub my parents owned at the time and I believe my love for music started then. As a young girl, I was surrounded by all kinds of music instruments, because one of my fathers is a musician. He taught me how to play the flute, a few melodies at the piano and later in live, how to sing in a manner my cat-friends didn’t feel the need to run away.
My dad also introduced me to Blues, Jazz and Rock.
My mother made sure I learned about legendary singers like Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald and for years, at January 1, we always watched the symphonic orchestra with beautiful classical music, accompanied with fantastic ballet dancers aired on television.

One of the first things I did and still often do, after waking up in the morning, is turn on the radio. I remember how I recorded my favorite songs from radio shows and was always frustrated the DJ’s talk through the beginning or end. Although I don’t like all genres, there are not that many songs or music pieces I can’t listen to. The older I get, the more the lyrics become important to me; an art within art…just amazing how songwriters can play with words.
My taste in radio-shows changed a bit, but I always have the radio or another music device turned on. Other writers need silence to write, I need music in the background.

Another fact I just love about music: it connects people. We can dance to it together, sing to it together (don’t you just love those karaoke events and it doesn’t matter if you sing like a squeaking squirrel 🙂 ), listen to it together at concerts or festivals. Festivals are fantastic: how I wish I could have been to Woodstock! At the age of three I attended with my parents my first festival Pinkpop (the oldest festival in The Netherlands), in my early twenties I danced at Blues festivals and in my early thirties I went to Pinkpop again.
Just the other day I watched a documentary about the Rolling Stones, giving a concert in Havana, Cuba for the first time. Apparently decades ago it was forbidden to even listen to this kind of music in Cuba: you would literally thrown in jail if you did! Isn’t it amazing that after 50 years of touring, people in Cuba got to go to the first Rock concert and it was for free 🙂

Together with my dad, I am going to take you back to early 1900 and we will travel together forward to 2017, sharing with you our vision how Music for the Soul evolved.

Don’t know about you, but music is to me more than just sounds with or without words added to it. If I feel down, music comforts me, lifts me up, motivates me. If I am happy, music just adds to that feeling of happiness. In whatever state of mind you are, there is always…

Music for the Soul.

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January 2017