Author Archives: robbert

elephant songs #0 – surprise prologue

By robbert | Published: 17 January 2012

Madras, South India, 13 January 2012 A few days ago I had an enjoyable hour of chatting and playing on Yugi Sethu’s talkshow, in the company of friend & multi-talented singer Yogeswaran Manickam, also known as Yoga. The show is scheduled to be broadcast next Saturday, 21 [...]

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elephant songs #1, bangalore – today and tomorrow!

By robbert | Published: 11 January 2012

After a kick-off-in-style at the B-Flat Bar in Bangalore, the first official episode of Elephant Songs will play this weekend at the beautiful Plantation House and at the Fireflies Music Festival. Musicians are Maarten Visser on saxophones, Keith Peters on electric bass, Robbert van Hulzen on drums, [...]

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bullet, hanh?

By robbert | Published: 27 December 2011

I noticed them for the first time in 2004. Beautiful design, and a sound that makes a Harley hang its head and weep. I decided to one day ride a Royal Enfield Bullet to Europe, passing through all those countries I’d so far only seen through an [...]

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oto.3 these days (and: movie edit!)

By robbert | Published: 19 December 2011

After editing the footage of riding through Nepal, included in “mountains! please?” iMovie was no longer the intimidating dark cloud that had stopped me from putting up clips of the oto.3 concerts in Amsterdam in the early summer. So here it is [...]

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congratulations in india

By robbert | Published: 17 November 2011

After a few very pleasant days in Anand, I needed a few hours to get comfortable in interlocal traffic again. Sanderien and I had been riding around, city style, mainly from coffee to lunch and back. The highway was difficult: three lanes, with the slow and large [...]

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udaipur rooftops

By robbert | Published: 13 November 2011

Had lunch on a blitzvisit to Udaipur after riding the last 250 kilometres on the fantastic NH76 cruising at about 80 kilometres an hour. Something doesn’t work out in this equation but I don’t know what it is. The fact that I started out riding more slowly, [...]

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poha!

By robbert | Published: 11 November 2011

I left the Shahbad Government Resthouse at dawn and turned onto the still empty highway. Sometimes you were supposed to understand, without warning, that you had to go to the other side of the divider, going against the flow of (non-present) traffic, because a landslide or some [...]

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till the cows come home

By robbert | Published: 10 November 2011

Oohhh I like it here. Warm and welcoming and friendly. Mister Gautam showed me my room in the Government Resthouse – a small palace, slightly crumbling in a grandiose way. A bath room full of big black ants and their deceased kin, a western toilet, and hot [...]

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test ride day one – my way is the highway

By robbert | Published: 9 November 2011

Got up in my Nautanwah hotel just before sunrise, brushed my teeth, paid my rs 50, and pushed the bike out of the courtyard. It was still there! Even the petrol! Was feeling a little apprehensive about leaving it there last night after some semi-aggressive guy kept [...]

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siddhartha’s way

By robbert | Published: 8 November 2011

Taking off from Pokhara, I easily found the Siddhartha Highway. This road was constructed in the 1960s, providing some much-needed employment for the two thousand Tibetans that ended up in Pokhara, having been relocated there from refugee camps near the Tibetan border. (After the Chinese invasion in [...]

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mountains! please?

By robbert | Published: 6 November 2011

Last night in Pokhara, and I realised I didn’t know where to get a nice thukpa. This was after the restaurant I counted on for acces to their wifi network (conveniently available from my hotel room but in need of a password) turned out to be already [...]

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lalala – a week in katmandu

By robbert | Published: 31 October 2011

Two crows in a tree are fighting over a flattened rat. I don’t quite get the excitement – just how nutritious can that dried out piece of fur still be? Or is this just about prestige? But it’s an entertaining spectacle I’m watching from behind my regular [...]

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monday match

By robbert | Published: 22 October 2011

Dancer Irene van Geest and myself felt honoured being asked to curate a Monday Match, a night in the montly series of music & dance improvisation at the Amsterdam Bimhuis. We were very happy to get a large & inspiring cast together: Peter Cseri, Lily Kiara, Silvia [...]

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underwear gig @ studio 7, 12 august 2011

By robbert | Published: 1 September 2011

Before rushing off to the Buurtboerderij to jam on Pumporgan tunes with Dirk Bruinsma, Jasper Stadhouders, and John Dikeman, I had the honour of playing in Sharon Smith’s rock band in Studio 7, put together by the inimitable Katie Duck. El Torrero on electric bass (an object [...]

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dikeman & van der weide & van hulzen @ fat form, 6 august 2011

By robbert | Published: 11 August 2011

Breed begrip: an instant jazz trio on a rainy roof in Amsterdam Bijlmer. Enveloped by the smell of chocolate brownies, the sound of heavy summer (?) rain, and the curious attention of a varied audience, saxophonist John Dikeman, cellist Raoul van der Weide, and I, drummer Robbert [...]

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riding the bullet in south india, february 2011

By robbert | Published: 13 February 2011

Nayana organised a Bullet for me when I was in Bangalore a few weeks ago. On this visit, I was lucky enough to borrow it again, so I could find out how I liked a somewhat longer trip on a bike like that. And do I really [...]

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those fucking fish, what is it with those fucking fish, man

By robbert | Published: 21 November 2010

It’s unbelievable. You look at the sea. You swim in the sea. You stick your feet wash your hands cool your skin get salty make love get sunburnt in the sea. But then that’s not actually in the sea. It’s more on the sea. In-the-sea is another [...]

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  • ELEPHANT SONGS

    Elephant Songsis a band with an always changing line-up: new musicians join drummer Robbert van Hulzen each time he stops in an interesting place on his way from Chennai (South India) to Amsterdam (Holland) on a vintage Enfield motorcycle loaded with drums. Fourteen countries, 15,000 kilometres, who knows how many months.
    Elephant Songs is the optimistic inversion of the old story of the blind men and the elephant. Everyone experiences music differently, but we can always create a piece of music together, whatever we call it and wherever we come from. Each fresh combination of musicians plays music that is the result of a few days of working together, playing tunes from Robbert's Elephant Songbook and pieces brought by the other members-of-the-moment.
    Elephant Songs often involve odd metre rock grooves, filmic melodies, South Indian rhythm games, homespun harmonies, and an imperceptable balance between composition and improvisation.
    Of each meeting, a track is published on nocount.org; after arriving in Europe, a full album will be released.