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.
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.
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.
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* 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.
“Liederen uit de hele wereld klinken in de huizen. Wie heeft er nog aandacht voor een traag oud lied, dat vroeger de lange winteravonden kortte of een eindeloze werkdag op het land?”
Op 23 juli 2010 is op 84-jarige leeftijd de Nederlandse radiomaker en volkskundige Ate Doornbosch overleden. Hij is op 29 juli gecremeerd. Doornbosch presenteerde van 1957 tot 1993 dertienhonderdzestien keer het populaire radiopogramma ‘Onder de Groene Linde’ waarin hij overal in Nederland mensen thuis bezocht en opnamen maakte van door henzelf gezongen, mondeling overgeleverde liederen. Doornbosch legde op die manier zo’n 5000 traditionele liederen vast. Zijn inspanningen leverden een imposant archief op dat in Amsterdam wordt beheerd door het P.J. Meertens Instituut.
Click here to listen to my 2002 radio documentary ‘Playing around India’ (original dutch title: ‘Op streek in India’) - mostly in dutch, but also some segments in english - on hindusthani ragaplaying cellist Saskia Rao-de Haas. The great thing is that non-dutch people can completely follow what’s being said throughout the documentary, since below Saskia’s picture in this blog you can click on a picture that contains the complete TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH of the speakers in the programme + time indication + beautiful pictures!
From the Netherlands Saskia moved to Delhi to continue her musical career there and to live there with her husband, famous sitar player Shubhendra Rao who’s also featured in the programme. The documentary was very well received and was broadcasted several times by de Concertzender and by Radio Netherlands. I think the documentary - listen here - is definitely worth a listen for evryone interested in this kind of music.
And by clicking on the picture below - click a few times to enlarge to the right size - you can read a COMPLETE ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the speakers in the programme with time indication and pictures added! The (very good) translation was done by Mike Wilcox.
If you like raga music and like to know more about my programme, feel free to join the Gharana Facebook-profile as a member. I’d love to welcome you there!
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 has just received the petition from Gusta Korteweg, managing director of De Concertzender
After receiving the petition from the Concertzender-delegation Minister Ronald Plasterk (more…)
I’ve just started using a new device called iRadio. More specific: I’m listening to Terratec’s NOXON iRadio . Once installed, wired or wireless, with software on your PC or laptop, this radio offers you thousands of radiostations from all over the globe (more…)
