Music: How music became a passion

How music became one of my passions? Well, this is the story in a nutshell of how the musical preferences that I now have came to be:

An interest in music runs in the family, so have been exposed to it from an early age. My father sings in a choir and plays the guitar and piano. My mother also sings. One of my uncles plays in a band. Now one of my brothers plays guitar, drums and sings in a band. My other brother raps in a hiphop group. I play jaw harp, didgeridoo and sing. I was also in a choir, but this sadly enough isn't possible anymore because of my travelling.    

For me it all started in the mid 90's. Techno, house and dance were very popular back then and some of those tunes still take me on a trip down memory lane. Things like 'Carlos - The silmarilla', 'McKenzie ft. Jessy - Innocence', 'Dj Visage - Formula 1', 'Pat Krimson - Paranoid in Moscow' and 'Groovezone - ICU' still bring a smile to my face every time I hear them.

During the early years of my secondary school I took art lessons, which brought me into contact with more alternative people who listened to other stuff I was used to. It was here that I got to know things like Nirvana, Radiohead and The Offspring. I got to know the radio station 'Studio Brussel', which I then considered very alternative. It was around this period that I started purchasing cd's.

I still remember one of the first cd's I bought on my own: 'Mortal Kombat: Annihilation'. I was a big Mortal Kombat fan back then (still am actually), but I never thought this movie soundtrack would have such a profound impact on my life. The cd was a true revelation to me, a portal to a new world, as if it were. It was the first time I came into contact with the term "industrial", which would steer me in a certain direction that I never could have imagined back then.

Later on, when I started to study Arts in secondary school, Nu metal became the new kid on the block, with Korn, Papa roach and Linkin park as the most popular. Around this period some of my peers introduced me to System of a down and Rammstein, which I really liked. Rammstein I already knew from the Mortal Kombat cd, but I never really liked the song that was on there. It was also during this period that I started to go out more and came into contact with some friends who always took me to The Irish Pub: Stapletons, still my favorite pub to this day. There I got to know my first folk. With my musical preferences leaning towards Nu metal and a beginning tendency towards industrial metal, like Rammstein, and a hint of folk I left secondary school to enter my first year of university.

In my first year of university I studied Archaeology. It was in this year that I met Andy, a dear friend of mine with whom I still meet up when I'm in Belgium. One of the first times I saw him, he was wearing a 'The Offspring' pullover, so I asked him about his musical preference. Since then we became friends with the same insatiable hunger when it comes to exploring the musical realms. He has been a major influence on my musical preferences and still is. 

One of the biggest turning points in my further expansion of musical taste was my very first Bunkerleute, a monthly gothic party in Leuven, my hometown. Andy told me he was going to a gothic party where they occasionally play industrial. I really didn't know what to expect, so I came along out of curiousity. It blew my mind. Never did I go to a party with music like this. So dark and gloomy, yet so diverse. I was sold when they played Rammstein and even perplexed when they played 'The Neon judgement - TV treated'. I knew this song, although another version of it! It was 'Groovezone - ICU', but a slower version of it! I ran up the stairs to the dj booth to ask the dj with the sinister name The Darker Angel what remix this was. With a puzzled look he said "This isn't a remix...". Little did I know that this song was the original and the other one was the remix...

For the next years I was hooked to this music. I rarely skipped these parties and went to other cities for other gothic parties as well. The diversity in this subculture was so refreshing! One of the first bands I got to know was Corvus corax, a mediaeval band, which I've recently seen live. Best concert ever! Mediaeval was the first genre I explored, propably because it somehow resembled folk, together with industrial. Other genres like dark wave, dark ambient, futurepop, EBM, punk and ethereal soon followed and became appreciated. Later on I started to explore genres connected to other subcultures like breakcore and psytrance.

Residing in the gothic scene led to another big turning point in my life: Moving out of my parents house. I went to live together with some of my gothic friends in the center of the city in a house we conveniently called 'DWS5' after the street name and number. It was through my girlfriend back then, that I first started to appreciate acoustic guitar. That was because of the movie 'Into the wild' we once saw together. Fantastic soundtrack, with beautiful acoustic guitar played by Eddie Vedder and Kaki king. It's also one of the movies that influenced me to become the traveller I am now.

It was during that time that I started to play didgeridoo and jaw harp and started singing in a choir. I became more and more interested in making music myself, instead of only listening to it. The diversity of instruments and sounds coming from these opened a whole new world to explore. I still haven't come to the point where I really make the music that I want to make, but that point is coming closer and closer.

My recent travels made me aware of the uniqueness of Dutch and Flemish as a language and have made me to become more appreciative towards songs sang in my own language, especially when it is sang in dialect. Things like 'Wannes Van De Velde - Ik wil deze nacht in de straten verdwalen', 'Louis Neefs - Mijn vriend Benjamin' and even 'Katastroof - Spauwen is gevaarlijk' certainly lie closer to my heart now.

All of this brings me to the point where I am now: appreciative to almost all genres that cross my path and exhilarated when something truly original and creative comes along. I love it when certain bands fuse two genres together. A couple of examples that I absolutely adore:
'Dark soho - Unusual ceremony' (psytrance + metal)
'Sephiroth - Wolftribes' (dark ambient + tribal)
'This morn' omina - (The) Ninth key [CCF]' (industrial + tribal)
'Les Ramoneurs de menhirs - Dans gwadek 2' (mediaeval + punk)

Besides that there are also these few very talented artists who can create a certain atmosphere with their music like non other can. For example:
'Burial - Forgive'
'Wardruna - Heimta thurs'
'The Kilimanjaro darkjazz ensemble - Shadows'
'A silver Mt. Zion - Sit in the middle of three galloping dogs'
'Dj shadow - Stem/long stem'

There are many more artists who have had a profound impact on my musical preferences. You can find them in my Grooveshark playlists on the 'music' page.

I still find it truly astonishing what an effect music can have on a human being. Recently I became more interested in the theory behind music and I hope to post some articles about it as well.

What my musical dreams are at the moment? Learn to play the guitar, learn to beatbox and some day throat sing together with an Inuit.