Category Archives: elephant songs

live at true brew, lahore

By robbert | Published: 27 April 2012

On Thursday 26 April, a fantastic selection of musicians from the Lahore rock and fusion scene participated in Elephant Songs. Co-produced by True Brew Studios, ProperGanda, and Aamach Productions, who are also preparing the release of some filmclips and all the audio of the evening. Here’s a [...]

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rooftop meeting and show tonight

By robbert | Published: 26 April 2012

On Sunday 15 April, I was visited by Akmal Qadri and his son Nazar Abbas and tabla player Kashif Ali Dani. We enjoyed tea and music on the pleasant rooftop of Sajjad Hussain’s Lahore Backpackers. I met Akmal and friends again yesterday, when we rehearsed for the [...]

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jilebi chronicles

By robbert | Published: 10 April 2012

Gooey or crispy, that’s the debate – or so I learnt from reading Kamila Shamsie’s Broken Verses. Either way, I was very surprised to find them here in Pakistan: jilebis! A deep fried sugar concoction that melts in your mouth, and on your fingers, which I believed [...]

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takatak

By robbert | Published: 1 April 2012

Takatak is the onomatopeic (or, as the Germans in an unexpected but most appreciated fit of romance put it, onomatopoetic) name for a dish consisting mainly, if I’m not mistaken, of chopped up goat’s testicles. All over the old town of Lahore you can hear the sound [...]

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country side ride

By robbert | Published: 29 March 2012

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lahore!

By robbert | Published: 26 March 2012

Lahore, Pakistan! I’m in the next country of my road trip, one closer to Holland. Eleven to go :-) The Wagah border, the only overland border between India and Pakistan, was surprisingly quiet. On the Indian side, I was held up while a number of easygoing Sikh [...]

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the thar desert: balesar to bikaner

By robbert | Published: 21 March 2012

After taking my morning pictures, I knocked on a few doors, hoping to find someone to unlock the door to my bike. Everyone I talked to seemed to understand what I wanted, and then disappeared without anything happening. Eventually another hotel guest talked to some of the [...]

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bye bye broadlands

By robbert | Published: 29 February 2012

I was planning to leave at check-out time. 11 am. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, after postponing waking up for half an hour and taking my time packing, I left my luggage in Klaus’ room and tied the suitcase that lives in Madras onto the bike – tried to [...]

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jamming with egor in the broadlands

By robbert | Published: 23 February 2012

While I was grumpily attempting to whack the replacement rear subframe for my bike into the right spot so that it would line up with all the appropriate holes in the frame, a short Russian with a razor-straight fringe till just above his eyes started talking to [...]

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elephant songs #1 – all star jazzband

By robbert | Published: 21 February 2012

The first official episode of Elephant Songs played in Bangalore for two weekends in February. We kicked off at the famous B-Flat in Indiranagar. The next weekend, we came back for a show at the beautiful Plantation House and at the Fireflies Music Festival. Musicians were Maarten [...]

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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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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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temporary homelands

By robbert | Published: 23 November 2011

The hill crossing on the day I left Bangalore had to wait till after lunch – but then, so did most everything on that day. After spending many hours waiting for a meeting that never happened and accepting further delays caused by multiple half-decent but oh so [...]

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strong hands and candle light

By robbert | Published: 21 November 2011

Had had a great day and a half at the Shisha Café in Pune, playing a good show with saxophonist Maarten Visser and bass player Mishko M’ba and hanging and, not to be forgotten, eating lots of fantastic food washed down with mint cocktails and dhoog, a [...]

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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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  • 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.