Elephant Songs is a band with an always changing line-up: new musicians join drummer Robbert van Hulzen in selected places on his way from South India to the Netherlands on an old Enfield motorcycle loaded with drums. Fourteen countries, 15,000 kilometres, as many musicians as I can find in who knows how many months. See also the full calendar below – and check back regularly or subscribe as new dates are added often.
Of each meeting, a track is published on nocount.org.

Fourteen countries, 15,000 kilometres on a 1979 350 cc Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle. From Madras and the deep south via India’s west coast up to Amritsar, crossing into Pakistan at the Wagah border. After Lahore, Quetta, and the somewhat nervousness-inspiring Baluchistan desert, I’ll cross into Iran, and ride up into Armenia and Georgia after passing through Kerman, fairy-tale Isfahan, and Tehran. At the Sarpi border into Turkey, following the northern coast. After Istanbul I’ll ride northwest in Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, and into the low lands.
I’ll bring my drums and a list of musicians on the way. I’d like to play with with two or three musicians at the time, in a previously not existing combination. We’ll all bring something to work with, and come up with music together. Perform – in someone’s living room or on a brightly-lit stage – and record it.
After each session I’ll post a track on my blog nocount.org , and I’ll use the recordings to make an album after the trip is over. More sound and text and image can be found on my blog.
Of course all musicians have their own version of music. Music is not the universal language, it’s a phenomenon like music: it’s everywhere, and wildly different from place to place. But since it’s sound rather than words, we can meet and use our own idioms while working together. I think that when we share our musics, we all create parts that together form the elephant. While our perspectives may differ, the elephant is the combined effort of all the parts. Sometimes we may not know in advance, or even while we’re creating it, what exactly our elephant looks like, or if it even is an elephant. But you’ll find a song there.

Music has taken Dutch drummer Robbert van Hulzen many places (Indonesia, the US, Palestine, Canada, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain etc), but he has a special relationship with India, which he’s been visiting for the past fifteen years, learning about South Indian music and playing with various groups and musicians from the fusion scene and the classical world, including Maarten Visser, Keith Peters, Mishko M’ba, BK Chandramouli, Anoor Anantha Krishna Sharma, and Manjula Nagesh and organises his own projects. In Amsterdam, he works with mathpunk band Lola Montez, dancer Michael Jahoda, contemporary gamelan ensemble Gending, and many others, and writes and produces music for film and theatre.