Dust, ringing ears and Willy Wonka: a pep talk for our Brussels musiC

In 'The Wizard of Oz'(1939), Judy Garland sings the classic line 'somewhere over the rainbow'. A bittersweet intro, just before she is swept away by the storm that sets the story in motion. A story that teaches us that you can find friendship in unexpected places, who is or isn’t your enemy, and that nostalgia can be a dangerous force.

Anyone who has seen the film knows it is rich in imagination. Totally bonkers, really, but that event actually happened. Almost a hundred years ago in the United States. It was called the Dust Bowl, and it lasted for years. Bam, smack in the middle of the Depression. A combination of extreme drought, the region’s infamous storms, and America’s obsessive drive for more, created enormous, deadly clouds of dust. Titanic forces that blotted out the sun, unleashed plagues, and slowly suffocated all life. The biblical proportions of the misery convinced the deeply religious local population that this was the end. The churches that remained standing became places of refuge. Everything else slowly disappeared under the dust dust. Cars, houses, barns, schools and people… Gone. Burned into my retina: a photograph taken inside a church, its windows blown out by a storm, filled with worshippers who, together and praying, breathed their last. Some thirty bodies beneath a thick layer of dust, a Bible in hand, or over the face, as a futile final attempt at one last breath.

Pompeii, Oklahoma.

Why am I starting with this? What was not buried forever is their music. Despite all the doom, this infertile pre-war period turned out to be musically fertile ground. People from all kinds of backgrounds joined forces to survive, left their racist pride behind, and allowed their ideas, art, and musical traditions to merge into a whole. When it really became impossible to stay and they had to flee, these innovative sounds spread across the rest of America and eventually to the rest of the world. With Woody Guthrie as the prophet of this new politically charged country sound, countless folk apostles followed in his wake. Today, a large chunk of American-made music traces its roots back to this incredibly dark chapter.

(This is, ofcourse, the white side of the story. If we pretend the Dust Bowl also erased all inequality and the failed business model of the American Dream, we could convince ourselves that everyone there lived happily ever after, sending only beautiful films and music into the world.)

Now we find ourselves at the start of the Week van de Belgische Muziek (Belgian Music Week). The spotlight shines on our own musical heritage, with good reason. And it shines with Brussels, also with good reason, at the forefront. This week also gives us a chance to discuss the elephants in the room. No Dust Bowl here, but we’re suffocating nonetheless: Brussels is losing its musical oxygen at a rapid pace.

Dramatic, yes, but we’re also in trouble due to massive budget cuts, the absence of a government, and the Flemish project subsidies, which were a bloodbath for many Brussels-based initiatives. It all came together in a perfect storm, and the wreckage has begun. You only need to open a newspaper once a week, and another iconic venue has fallen.

I wanted to write a letter to the music sector. Meant as two gentle hands on the shoulders, a gentle shake, a worried little pep talk. With the question of how we should look at our toxic, co-dependent relationship with the government, and dare to call it as such. Clearly, they've broken up with us, and have other priorities (which is a given, with Brussels look more and more like Gotham City every day). Dry your eyes, mate.

How do we survive this “zondersteuning” (“unsupported period” but cuter?) if we don’t do everything we can to become stronger? It’s only possible if we fix our unstable foundation.

My first draft ended with a huge cliché: 'And so we beat on, boats against the current'. The part of the closing line of The Great Gatsby. You’re allowed to roll your eyes. Though we will be rowing upstream for a while, in my full-on emotional state, I went for the subtlety of those confetti-bombs you get at HEMA.

The letter went through many rough drafts. One version was going to be an op-ed for Bruzz, another a kind of Joepie-style article called “5 Love Tips for the Sector to Survive This Loveless Period”. Each item was a song title. Trashed it.

I compared the music sector to the Leaning Tower of Pisa: breathtaking, but poorly founded, and clearly crooked. I described key terms like “DIY” and “community” as hollowed-out concepts, their original purpose long gone. Now they only exist in that H&M rack where you also find plastic glasses without prescription and Nirvana T-shirts. Our modus operandi needs to be fixed to survive, and we must address those elephants first, those blind spots. The usual suspects: sexism, racism, low artist fees. These are subtler now, but not gone. But also the even subtler silent killers, we tend to forget: weak spots that endanger our chances of survival.

Deeply ingrained traits, like misplaced competition and expansionist tendencies must be themes for next week’s debates. I spoke about the soloistic visionaries, the Willy Wonkas of the Brussels music scene. They’ve convinced us that chocolate doesn’t exist without their factory, or without their personal sacrifices. Erratic benefactors with a kind of Calimero–messiah complex, who, with their loud voices in the battle for a fair sector, camouflage their toxic behavior. Under the guise of support, they expand their influence and image, quietly keeping gatekeeping in place. (Because who really benefits from a solution if they live off the problem?)

Don’t get me wrong: most Wonkas also have a genuinely positive impact on Brussels music. The problem is that, through their misplaced prioritized self-branding, they primarily promote music they personally like, or artists they favor, or names with an already sizable following they can show off and take credit for their success. Which was already underway.

All of this under the banner of “music for everyone.”

I chose Wonka because the comparison to the shady guy in the alley whispering, “Hey kid, you wanna be famous?” felt just a bit too dark.

Too many Wonkas, too many princes in our sector, as a network of small, competing kingdoms. The Holy Roman Empire just called: they want their 17th-century border divisions back.

Enough of this please! From now on, this has to be done together, or we, too, will become a thing of the past. Shared resources, shared know-how, a shared future. Our music is fantastic, but it can also serve as a legitimate tool to strengthen the city. It restores confidence to people from whom it’s been beaten out, only for them to then be blamed for everything that goes wrong. What we have builds bridges where policy fails. If we collaborate more with social initiatives, we don’t just broaden our audience, we make the city fairer.

And louder.

All versions of my letters came down to how fast we need to act.

“This coming week, for instance, after one of those events during the Week of Belgian Music, listen carefully to that long ringing tone in your ears when you’re lying in bed, because that’s what the heart monitor of the Brussels scene will soon sound like. If we don’t seize the coming week to discuss serious changes in our world that make survival possible, then in future editions we won’t be shining our spotlights on the music itself, but on its echo. And an echo reflects no light.”

The drama.

But, each version of the letter got longer, and more bitter. And today I realized I’m not bitter. I’m head over heels in love! Apparently, I’m genuinely afraid of losing the love of my life. So this becomes, just before the Week of Belgian Music, and, if you insist, just before Valentine’s Day, my love letter. To Brussels music, as a whole.

To you.

Free of my pseudo-journalistic mask, I was allowed to neatly store away the ChatGPT, next to my Joepie idea, in the trash. The final version took the shape of a metaphor-soaked, incoherent little manifesto that shoots off in all directions, without a clear message, except for the love.

A bit like myself, and a bit like you. Darling….

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My love, How can it be that not a single soul in this forsaken land doth throw itself before the bullets of indifference to guard thee? Thou art wounded, and I wonder: hath thy value been forgotten by those whose eyes are blind? Must we wait again for some Angèle upon the Olympic stage before they see that our music defines us abroad as more than ale, chocolate, and childish political chaos?

Sweetheart, we must act together. The hour is come to decide what we shall save from this blaze. Shall we save dead on arrival beer museums or lifeless winter markets? Or rather our music-makers: the spark of our heart’s flame, that trembling fire which stirs our debates? That fire is needed now more than ever, for from our comfortable meritocratic sleep we seem to have forgotten what we truly believe.

Six hundred days without a government, and save for a few playful gestures, naught but grumbling on our side. While we navigate mountains of refuse, the houseless, and spent bullet casings on our way to our cultural activities. Our physical world is abandoned by those who long ago proved their cowardice, who now may trade badges of “representative” for the mark of “traitor.”

Yet we, my love! We can reign again over our unseen world. Our wealth, ungraspable yet tangible, is the breath of spirit that moves a people. Change hangs not like fruit above our city, but like an anthem, impatiently waiting to be written.

The river of ignorance hath overflowed its banks. Brussels doth slowly drown in the drool of career politicians, whilst the weakest are cast like sandbags before the gates of our castles of denial. Hath the city passed its tipping point? Then we are the balance. We can give the victims a place within our wealth. For aid, we shall dig secret tunnels between our lands and the social hills beyond, a hidden network of history, of sound, of people, away from the eye of Mordor.

Silence the fast-fashion clatter at Muntplein, and hark! The Brussels wind still sings the aria of revolution…

Babycakes, my favorite thing in thee? That at every touch my heart beats as though the first. Thy many forms, thy ease in weaving the stories of others into thine own. Without question, thou dost open gates for every musician adrift, seeking shelter. Every artist must find a haven in thee. For thou knowest their role in our world is true. They are the chroniclers of our time, with brush, lens, and note, recording what our life is, as is. They are like the rings of a tree, marking the choices of our shared life, visible far into the future. We read these rings and see where we faltered, and where courage guided our hand rightly.

We must continue our crafting, my dearest love. ‘Tis not needful that each note be flawless, yet if the music cease, all is undone. A humble mixtape, burned upon a simple disc, shall serve, one that we may play somewhere over the rainbow, within our steadfast old chariot, as we roll in solemn pace toward the promised sunrise, emerging at last from this long and shadowed night.

For when I wander through the city, I feel Brussels, momentarily lost, yet still daring to live, with thee as its heartbeat. That pulse, a weakend tremble with a roar of the ages, is the fruit of decades of devotion, battle and collective pride. Should they let thee crumble, we lose that which may never be rebuilt. And then remains naught but Spotify’s mechanical echoes, lifeless A.I. imitations. Echoes of music, and echoes cast no light.

Non serviam.

Forever thine, Adam