by Gerrit Walter a.k.a. The Song & Dance Brigade
I am kindly asked to write something about my musical life, which has now spanned several decades. No one had ever asked me that before. Well, I have been making music since I was 13 years old. My mother taught me how to play the guitar, at least the rudimentary playing she mastered. That was when I was thirteen.
Since then, I’ve been playing the guitar. It’s the instrument I desire in terms of beauty, sound, and challenge. In school, they told me I couldn’t sing. I did it anyway.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
I started playing drums and guitar in a New Wave band. Since then, I’ve been trying to write songs and pay attention to rhythm. I write poems; that is my main occupation, alongside theatre work. However, poems are difficult to set to music. So, I experimented with lyrics, noise, and radio plays. I discovered that radio plays lacked music at some point, so I started writing songs for them myself. I am a person dedicated to art, theatre, and literature. So, I try to bring everything together in music, lyrics, and performance.
When I was twenty years old, feeling lonely, I discovered the blues and, with it, the harmonica. Harmonicas were affordably cheaper than guitars, amplifiers, and drum sets. Over time, and primarily due to unjust economic globalization, everything became more affordable—guitars, amplifiers, and equipment.
I could afford instruments and recording equipment since I now had a profession that earned me money. More instruments were added, such as accordion, percussion, melodica, mandolin, etc. Since then, I have been producing CDs and now, once again, vinyl records. Vinyl records are works of art; they are like paintings, only better—you can hear the paintings, and they move.
The live performance brings everything together: images, projections, music, and text. I have been doing this for over thirty years, with little success and low sales figures. But I don’t care. I always wanted to be independent and not be told what to sing and play. That remains the same until I can no longer.
Few musicians play with me, but they stay with me. Few listeners listen, but they always hear. I don’t want to talk about musical, artistic, and literary role models and influences; there are too many, and everyone should listen to them for themselves.
Some musicians say that music comes from God. I don’t believe in any god so that I wouldn’t know that. As I see it, music comes from people and the space they see, feel, and hear. That’s why I also sing in different languages.
Longue route à vous!