Home Rec. 
Didier François : Sjansons Patinées (B,2008)***'
“Sjansons Patinées” is a strange concept, but it has all the elements it describes to have, and with bitterness I must admit that the elements it expresses are in fact part of our Flemish and who knows “Belgian” nature. First of all with it I realised how the Flemish language has lost lots of its charms, and we hardly know how to sing it, because we miss a spontaneous musical language that evolved with it. And we seem to have only little or none of the richer cultural folk traditions having preserved well in anyone’s memory. Often, when being a serious creative musician, we tend to sing songs about things we can only realise vaguely when we are looking at the old infrastructures lying in the cities, in songs that express whatever that could have happened there, of expressions that also sound rather unnatural, both in use of language, for our daily feeling, and for expressing in fact a lost sense which became part of a bitter cultural reality, that formed an essential and unique aspect for our relationship with our country, a lack of a well grounded feeling of national or cultural pride, which in the conditions of it’s culture was formed has hardly ground to expand further. If generations after generations experienced too often changes of perspectives, of cultural identity and leadership, of conditions from total freedom to hypocrite commitment, from freeing socialism to a salon and mafia based socialism, from freedom in thought to Roman-Christian society, from independent cities, to invasions that led to some different country names, from an open culture of trust to chaotic clashes of mistrust, no aspect or memory is easily conditioned or preserved after that much change. We can only sing about with an aspect of mud, and even when we dig in the past bitterness of having stayed, a willingness to escape (to the Province for instance) is still in our minds today, but could have derived from conditions from earlier cultural clashes. What is available of elements are a feeling for classical music and arrangements, which never can do anything wrong, surviving folk elements that always sound natural, the fluent use of two languages, at least especially for how Brussels citizens so far still used to be, (French and Dutch/Flemish). For Flemish almost too many different dialects survived to make a real common cultural language possible.
One of the real folk figures with a love for the city (of Antwerp) but also with a love and knowledge and social engagement for gypsy music and its musicians (-also in the old days the Flamenco gypsies and the Flemish could get along so well, they were confused with one name-), and a respect for the real person, is Wannes Van De Velde. He just recently passed away. One of his songs, a waltz called “‘k wil deze nacht in de Straten verdwoalen” in Antwerp dialect, should be a classic, someone told me lately and it is true, I thought was not included at first, because 5 of his songs are included, and I didn’t recognised it. They strangely enough translated it to French and stripped it from its waltz and romance effect. It receives nice orchestrations, not the best singing but a small nice vocal arrangement. The vocal contributions all are subtely confusing. They deal with the nature of change and alienation, and bring in a new cultural expression already. Languages, dialects, cultures are mixed, gives this subtle bitter aspect, and still are able to present with all that a new complex and unique enough expression : its concept couldn’t be more clear.
