Dutch Jazz on YouTube

My favorite clip on YouTube (the user-stocked online video treasury that was 2006’s biggest media story), when I became ever-so-slightly addicted to searching out jazz on the site last fall, was 35 seconds of Coleman Hawkins, February 1935, snipped from a Dutch newsreel. Hawkins, looking disarmingly young and happy, says a few words (pronouncing ‘Polygoon’ better than your typical newly-arrived American), and then duets briefly with pianist Leo de la Fuente, fated to die at Auschwitz a decade later. Soon a restored version was also posted, revealing the tune they play to be I Wish I Were Twins, both jauntier and more rhapsodic than Bean’s record with the Ramblers: a real find.

So began a hunt for Dutch jazz and improvised music on YouTube (among other sites – try Jazz bij Polygoon not least for a glimpse of the 1937 Jazzconcours in Den Haag, which shows how far the prizewinning Rhythm Giggers and Swing Papa’s still had to go, swing-wise).

There was plenty to find. Rita Reys with Pim Jacobs’ trio, 1959, singing Cheek to Cheek, where she ejects packets of air after the terminal k’s, going for perfect English enunciation? It’s there. (On a 1966 It Could Happen to You – with brass solos by Benny Bailey and Art Farmer – she channels Sarah Vaughan.) Jerry van Rooyen and Herman Schoonderwalt with a Rob Madna trio, hard-bopping in 1962? There. Louis de Vries striving to be Pops? Surinam Music Ensemble, playing multi-culti Paramaribop in 1989, propelled by a killer Veldman/Gillis/O’Bryan groove? Misha’s cat Pief pit-a-pat on piano? Bennink and Brötzmann chomping on Salt Peanuts? Dulfer and Joe Bowie playing Caravan in Tunisia? Blurry excerpts from midweek sessions at De Smederij in Groningen? There, there, there.

Given the act’s music-hall echoes, the Breuker Kollektief is particularly well-served by linking picture to piep-knor. A circa-1990 German TV To Europe is a veritable Breuker primer, with its industrial-strength horn ensembles, Willem’s mock-free soprano solo, potted quotations, background hijinx – let’s get Andy drunk on beer! – and jokes milked a little too long. You can see exactly what’s going on, which is more than you can say for a home movie of ICP’s Criss Cross at Banlieues Bleues 2004, marred by my-first-editing-program wavy distortions, a witless attempt to suggest Mengelbergian surrealism. (The sound’s as watery as the images. Like much YouTube material, it’s actually filched from an existing DVD-one reviewed in this very issue, in fact.)

Sometimes, you could look away and just dig the sounds. Ernst Glerum’s bluesy, deep-forest pizzicato says more about the woody essence of the doublebass than the videographer contemplating the instrument at rest, on the still-life-with-music Woody Exterior.

As YouTube browsers know, the decentralized nature of the enterprise can make finding what you seek a challenge; the tags users affix to their uploads are not always helpful. Still, certain search terms will yield good results fast: ‘Bimhuis’, ‘Moondive’ or ‘Reijseger’, say. One learns to follow good streams back to the spring, looking for those tireless activists dedicated to making more and more good stuff available. First among those whose new uploads I monitor is Dutch-born Canadian dixieland cornetist Bob Erwig – source of the Hawkins and several other items mentioned above, and lots of Dutch Swing College Band – whose archives are awesomely deep.

Younger, internet-savvy musicians are well represented, unsurprisingly, though they may not post their own work. You’ll find Benjamin Herman’s quartet ajump on Vrije Geluiden (a fragment only, alas); Michiel Borstlap with Glerum and Bennink (also brief), or in duet with drummer Bill Bruford; Jesse van Ruller at Rotterdam’s Dizzy and Northsea, getting funky or introspective. (As of late December, however, I’d yet to find any Fuhler, Braam, Buis or Van Geel.)

Regarding the musician-generated stuff, be among the smart few (as of this writing) to view the quartet Talking Cows’ inspired mock-documentary, in which rival farmers on a foggy polder discuss their divergent (but richly nuanced) tastes in jazz, as the quartet play for non-talking namesakes in the barn. The six-minute film’s deadpan tone is perfect.

We didn’t even get to American jazz documented for Dutch TV—a topic for another time.

Links to music mentioned in column:

1. Louis de Vries
2. Surinam Music Ensemble, “Jive,” 1989
3. Pief the cat, 1967
4. Peter Brötzmann/Han Bennink, 2006
5. Hans Dulfer and Joseph Bowie, “Caravan,” 2006
6. Jam sessions at De Smederij, Groningen
7. ICP, “Criss Cross,” 2004
8. Ernst Glerum, “Woody Exterior”
9. Benjamin Herman on Vrije Geluiden, “Arachibutryophobia”
10. Bennink with Michiel Borstlap & Glerum (brief)
11. Borstlap and Bill Bruford, “Two Left Shoes Piano”
12. Jesse van Ruller at Dizzy
13. van Ruller at Northsea, “Blame It on My Youth”
14. Talking Cows