Gent into the groove…
September 2006
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Photo: Hilde Braet |
This year’s Gentse Feesten, which ran between 15 and 24 July, was a sizzling ten days of revelling during a record-breaking heat wave in Europe. With large stages offering free music on 10 of the city’s squares, there was something to suit all tastes: the feverish beats of Latin dance music, thumping techno, cool-cat jazz, offbeat alternative, and even traditional Belgian sing-alongs.
Festivals are an important and
integral part of Belgian culture. Although Gent is by far and away the largest
urban festival, practically every city, town and village in the country has its
own festival, ranging from the latest sounds to folk music, as well as a fair number
of religious processions and parades, despite plummeting church attendance. The
kermis (originally from kirkmass, or church mass) is a kind of ‘funfair’ which
is still fairly popular in some parts of the country.
Amongst the hundreds of thousands of
revellers the Gentse Feesten attracted there could be found skimpily clad teens
gyrating on one square, while their grandparents danced cheek-to-cheek on
another. Surprisingly, the hot weather kept the numbers slightly down on last
year. While an estimated 2 million people turned up during the 10 days in 2005,
organisers say that as many as a quarter of a million fewer people turned up
this year. Still, the Gentse Feesten is the third largest popular festival in
Europe.
Unfortunately, there is a pretty
heavy toll to pay for those who happen to live in the midst of the action. Some
avoid the noise by going on holiday during the festival. “The Gentse Feesten
has turned into a drinking fest,” a friend observed. “Too many people stand
about drinking and then they drink some more, until they can’t drink any more.”
One group of inner-city residents has even hired a lawyer to try and push the
city council to make sure that all the stages wind up their performance by 1 am
next year.
Although the festival has retained
its original spirit of free entertainment in all its main events, it has
succumbed to the apparently irresistible march of commercialisation, with most
podia receiving corporate sponsorship. The music on offer is also becoming more
commercial, particularly on the central stages.
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Foto Dienst Voorlichting Stad Gent |
However, those with less mainstream
tastes could still find plenty to enjoy on the festival’s fringes. Boomtown on the
city’s Oude Beestenmarkt drew a lot of underground rock, nu-jazz, hip-hop and
Latin groove acts. They included Gent’s own local boys done good Absythe Minded
and the popular hip-hoppers ’T Hof Van Commerce whose dialect is barely
understood, even by Flemings. International acts included Girls Against Boys
(USA) and Todd (UK).
There are also pay-for events on the
fringes of the festival, such as the Blue Note international jazz festival
which featured Belgian jazz legend Toots Thielemans, Nigerian ‘rhythmatist’
Tony Allen, jazzy hip-hopper US3 and the Fado-inspired Portuguese band
Madradeus.
For those who want more than music,
there was street theatre, a puppet festival and stand-up comedy, which is
currently all the rage in Flanders, with notable names including the faux-naïve
Wouter Deprez and the nonsensical all-singing, all-dancing Wim Helsen.
Although Gent has had, on and off, a
city carnival for centuries, the Gentse Feesten in its current incarnation was
born in the late 1960s and was the brainchild of Belgian rocker Walter De Buck
and the Trefpunt co-operative group.
“It all began in 1969 with three
mics on one podium stacked on two beer crates,” recalled Roland Van Campenhout,
a Belgian blues artist who performed at the first Gentse Feesten, in an
interview with 09. “Gent in those days was a bit of a dead city… Now it
is a vibrant city and that is largely thanks to the festival.” And Gent has,
indeed, become a trendy and hip corner of the country.
More information:
Singing
diversity’s praise
Diabolic
Digest readers and their friends should mark 1
October in their diaries. Not only will they be entertained by the biggest
names in Belgian music for free, they will also get the chance to make their
presence count in the struggle for cultural tolerance and racial equality. 0110 is the brainchild of Deus lead singer Tom Barman.
The
concerts – which will be held in Brussels, Antwerp, Gent and Charleroi – have
already attracted an impressive line up of stars, including gritty Arno,
mothers’ favourite Helmut Lotti, Zita Swoon, Axelle Red, Zap Mama and ‘t Hof
van Commerce. If you wish to support the event financially, you can send an SMS
to 3699 (cost: €1.50).
The anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang are up in arms at the
planned event and have urged Flemish artists not to take part – a call they
have ignored. To hit back, the far-right party has assembled a rogue’s parade
of minor singers, including Helmut Lotti’s unsuccessful brother, to take part
in an entirely missable counter event slated for 10 September.
More information
This article appeared in the September 2006
issue of (A)WAY magazine.
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