British newspaper recognises stature of dutch radio pioneer Ate Doornbosch

It’s quite amazing that the best newspaper coverage on the demise of dutch folksong collector and radiomaker Ate Doornbosch (1926-2010) comes from an overseas neighbour: British music journalist Ken Hunt wrote an excellent obituary about Ate Doornbosch for the British newspaper The Independent. To read this obituary, click here.
I think it’s regrettable that the dutch national NOS Journaal of public television broadcasting didn’t report on television on Ate Doornbosch’s passing away.

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Ate Doornbosch, busy transcribing

Of the big dutch newspapers (Telegraaf, Volkskrant, Parool, Trouw, NRC) only NRC published a short obituary. Still, without any doubt Ate Doornbosch was a figure of national importance. He became famous with his radio programme ‘Onder de Groene Linde’, that ran 1316 times between 1957 and 1993 and in its heydays attracted 350.000 listeners per episode. It was the longest running radio programme ever on dutch national radio.

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Ate Doornbosch recording old dutch folksongs at the people’s homes

“Few folk-song collectors anywhere match Doornbosch’s achievement, the public face of which was the long-running radio series Onder de Groene Linde (“Under the green linden”) and “his work was fairly compared to that of the US collector Alan Lomax”, writes British music journalist Ken Hunt about Ate Doornbosch in the aforementioned obituary.
It’s great to see that a foreign newspaper fully recognises the meaning and stature of the pioneering work of Ate Doornbosch. Here’s the link to the obituary once more.


Ate Doornbosch in 1990

* outside of the dutch press and media the only extensive dutch obituary I found is this one, written by professor Louis Grijp of the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam.

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Support Holland’s irreplaceable musicstation, De Concertzender!

On monday, 24 november 2008, at 12.15 PM in The Hague, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands, Ronald Plasterk, met a delegation of employees of De Concertzender. Managing Director of De Concertzender, Gusta Korteweg, presented him a petition that pleads for the preservation of De Concertzender in its present form, radiodistribution included.

Minister Ronald Plasterk receiving the petition from Gusta Korteweg, managing director of De Concertzender
Minister Ronald Plasterk has just received the petition from Gusta Korteweg, managing director of De Concertzender 

After receiving the petition from the Concertzender-delegation Minister Ronald Plasterk Continue reading

Radio Netherlands and All India Radio join forces at Amsterdam India Festival

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During the Amsterdam India Festival -from 12 november to 30 november 2008- Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) and All India Radio (AIR) work together for the first time in their english language reports. It’s the beginning of a partnership that will enable Continue reading

Beautiful traditional songs from Serbia in my latest Youtube-video


I’ve just published another video on my Youtube Channel, titled ‘3 beautiful songs from Serbia by three great female singers’. This tradional music from mid-twentieth century Serbia features enchantingly beautiful singing, that will immediately reach evry true music lover’s heart and soul. Also added some info over there.

some highlighted video’s on my youtube channel

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Listen to the Radio Netherlands Historical Audio Archive on the web!


In my work as an archivist at Radio Netherlands I deal with all kinds of audio-material. Apart from a huge record and cd collection, other treasures of the archives are the many thousands of music recordings done by Radio Netherlands (mostly western classical music, but also other genres like jazz and world music) and many thousands of music programmes and all kinds of spoken word programmes. Some of the oldest material is on 78rpm-records, but the vast majority is on tape. All this material is being digitized, and now selections of it are published and can be listened to on the web.
 

 one of the Radio Netherlands Worldwide logo’s

Besides regular news the spoken word programmes are concerned with big national events, dutch society, literature, art, royalty, economy, religion etc., all produced and broadcasted since the birth of Radio Netherlands in 1947. Altogether the Audio Archives of Radio Netherlands provide a unique perspective on the world at large and on the social, cultural and economic dimensions of dutch society since 1947. Since we’re talking about World Radio here, not only in dutch, but also in english, spanish, portuguese, french, surinamese, bahasa indonesia, afrikaans and arabic. 

  

For Holland the Radio Netherlands Archives have always been a sort of ‘hidden treasure’, but recently things have changed. All material is being digitized now and selections are now retrievable/available via internet, thanks to my colleague Martien Sleutjes who’s keeping a weblog and adding material on a daily basis. Though it may concern only selections, among them are real treasures. So, if you’d like to find out how Radio Netherlands reported about the world and dutch society in the past 60 years in different languages, take a dive in the Radio Netherlands Archives and start listening. You’ll be surprised by what you’ll find there, and there’s coming up more all the time!


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