"Brother, you have come." "Sit down." "Have you had breakfast?" "Ganesa, protect us from sickness..." "Here in Nepal, you must first make an offering to the elephant god Ganesa." "As a Hindu, you have to do that if you want to be successful." "First an offering to Ganesa, and then do what you have to do." "To me, music is work." "I make mistakes, and I think:" "It's not good enough." "When I play, I think only of the music." "Music is like an ocean." "What can we give to the ocean?" "Take a cup of water from it, and it makes no difference." "Throw water in, and that makes no difference to the ocean either." "Krishna Das!" "Please step outside." "I want to talk to you about a band for a wedding." "When?" " Next month." "How many people do you want?" "How big is the band?" "Eleven members." "It may last till two, or six o'clock." "But first the money." "It costs 8,000." "That's far too much." "That's the normal price these days." "Before it was 1,700." "Now 8,000?" "It shouldn't cost more than 3,400." "But I play with good musicians." "How much can you pay?" "2,500." " 2,500?" "Impossible." "4,000." "Let's say 3,000." "3,000 is not enough." "I have to think of the others too." " That's your problem." "I've already reduced it to 4,000." "3,000 is OK." " 3,500." "It's a good band." "Has to be good." "If 3,500 is OK, I'll let you know." "When will you tell me?" "I'll phone now to ask him." "Move over here." "Here comes Sandip." "Sit down." "Have you had your biscuits?" "I haven't eaten." "We'll have tea soon." "In Kathmandu, many musicians are of the Damai caste." "They work in the army, in the police band or at Radio Nepal." "People of our Damai caste have two common professions:" "They were tailors, even before the days of sewing-machines and musicians in the villages." "At a birth, celebration or death the Damai made music." "The brass bands came in during the rule of the Ranas." "The first Rana introduced them from England." "The conductors came also from England." "The tunes played were Colonel Bogey Georgia March, Blades Ray, Light Cavalry." "The Damai and Kasai played that music." "There was a special band for the Ranas." "And also for the ministers, the rich and the army." "Under the Ranas there was a lot of caste discrimination." "Why were we so set apart?" "But music is no small thing and pays no heed to caste." "Through music, we've reached a higher level." "Now people no longer say:" "Are you Damai or Kasai?" "When I can't play any more I hope my son will be a good musician too." "Good afternoon." "What are you making?" " A jacket." "Where are the big boys?" "I have to talk to Shyam Das." "Come in." "Hello." "Everything OK?" " Yes." "What are you making?" " A pair of trousers." "They have to be ready today, because the man is leaving." "I've come to see you." "I was just coming to see you." "We have to play tomorrow." "Did you know that?" "Now that you tell me, I know." "At what time?" "At eleven." "Where?" " Here in the city." "Do you have to go out today?" "Let's go and watch the football." "Finish this job quickly." "At what time will you be ready?" " At about twelve." "Just take a seat." "The bridegroom has to walk around." "Now you're responsible for her." "Today you can still laugh." "In 1850, Jung Bahadur the first of the Ranas, a new dynasty journeyed to England, the modern technological world." "There, he bought instruments for the new brass bands which were then set up to give added lustre to his power." "Bow to the deity and move on." "Have you an offering?" "Outside." "When I was old enough to know what a wind instrument was the music already existed in Surinam." "Even then I got involved in music." "You had no singers in the band." "You had no electric instruments." "We still had absolutely no electricity in Surinam." "The first evening people came to ask me they came to ask my father." "They said:" "Tell me, brother, where's your boy?" "My father said:" "He's asleep." "He has to go to school tomorrow." "They said:" "But let him come and help." "We can't play." "We have no soloist." "He's ill." "I had to get dressed, at twelve o'clock at night." "Clearly, if you stay up every night from twelve to five you can't go to school at seven o'clock because you play dance music up to eight hours on the trot." "That soon led to me leaving school and I was still under 17." "I had an eye operation when I was nine." "I have this gift from my ninth year onwards." "It is a present from the doctor, the eye specialist." "And all my life I have taken pleasure in it." "That's why I say:" "If you don't see this, you don't see Jopie Vrieze." "There were two Surinamese doctors in the hospital at that time." "The rest were whites, important gentlemen." "My mother thought:" "Your future is spoilt." "You'll never get anywhere with that eye." "One day, I said to her:" "Mother, are you dissatisfied?" "If it hadn't been my destiny to have it I wouldn't have had it." "She said:" "Is my boy so satisfied?" "Is my son such a satisfied person?" "I said:" "Yes." "She said:" "That's fine, my boy." "I'm glad you're satisfied." "Then I won't have to be sorry for you any more." "For you have it and you're satisfied." "And if God is so merciful as to let me become 78 soon and to let me still play my instrument I thank the Lord." "...our president has paid a visit to Caracas news about the coup d'etat in Venezuela the Dutch government is in favour of tough disciplinary measures in Surinam..." "In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ten million people were carried over the ocean in wooden ships." "They were taken as slaves from the west coast of Africa to work in the plantations of colonies in the New World." "The Churches brought them God's word and, somewhat later, God's instruments." "How are you, pa?" " Fine." "I gather that we have to play somewhere this weekend." "We're playing at Kwatta road." "Two performances." "We're on the road a lot, judging from the programme." "Yes, both day and night." "How do you manage that playing day in day out?" "Aunt loves the church and pa loves his band." "We've come to an agreement." "Have you so organized your lives that you have no problems?" "We try to adjust to life, you know..." "Just let life roll on as it does..." "Shall we also ask aunt about it?" "It's nice to see how two people hold their own." "And it really works." "Everyone can see that it works, but they don't know how it works." "Aunt, please come here." "How are you?" "I haven't seen you for ages." "I'm still alive." "I was just asking daddy how do you manage it, living with such a spirits musician?" "That's not too difficult." "I realize that his work obliges him to be away a lot." "He has to play with his band." "If I'm invited, I go with him." "It's very pleasant for a change, but not all the time." "I don't see it as a problem to combine going to church and a 'winti' celebration." "My husband has taught me a lot about spirits which I didn't know." "Now I understand more, I go to such occasions now and again." "You can't deny such things, just because you go to church." "Without God, wintis wouldn't exist." "So if I want to go to a winti celebration, I just go." "At church, I get involved in the service and forget about spirits." "Just the church and the word of God." "Without God, there would be no spirits and no people." "There would be no medicine men or priests either." "God has given you free will and understanding." "And from your free will you ought to know what you actually want." "Then you work towards that goal." "If you want something good then you move in that direction." "Wiithout turning aside." "Otherwise, it's bad for you troublesome for you." "You must certainly take that into account:" "What your goal is." "The Negroes who came to Surinam from Africa in the period of slavery brought their religious customs with them from Africa." "When they had contact with spirits their owners could no longer control those people." "They couldn't play the boss any more." "As a result, the cultural matters of the Negroes were forbidden." "I am referring to the matters of the wintis, the spirits." "Yes, in the colonial period the Church had to be called in to point out that God didn't want those things." "Then the police came to check." "We weren't allowed to engage in cultural matters." "People troubled by a winti go to a medicine man." "The medicine man has to decide what winti is present in that person." "That is, what problem that person has." "They are all spirits." "When I have to play on the spot I speak to the person who has hired me:" "Who is your guide, that is, your medicine man?" "Then I talk to this medicine man:" "What are you doing?" "What must I play for you?" "The medicine man will say to me:" "I need such and such wintis." "So then you play to get that winti to appear." "You call upon him or her to come." "Then you start working a bit harder." "You need him." "So you call him." "You beg him." "He must come to you to bring his wisdom." "O, mother Aisa, spirit of the earth, your child begs you." "Your child begs you, for you are the mother." "Turn round, comrade, turn round." "Turn your rocking boat round." "Keep going, rowers, keep going." "Keep going, sisters, keep going." "Good afternoon, grandad." "Come in." "Are you making an instrument?" "What is it?" "A tuba." "Sit down, grandad." "Our father left us this." "My father often talked about grandad." "He said that you were a conductor." "I used to be the leader of the Brilliant orchestra." "Oh, the Brilliant from Tomohon?" "Grandad is quite a bit older than your father." "He was keen to make progress and asked me about everything." "He is no more but he passed on his knowledge, acquired from all over and so this was set up." "I'm glad that you are carrying on with it because this is traditional music." "The music is completely dependent on nature." "In the foreign language, they call them 'natural sounds'." "Oh, grandad speaks Dutch." "In 1923 on the occasion of Queen Wilhelmina's jubilee all the orchestras assembled." " Was it a competition?" "Yes, and there were bands from Ratahan the first time I saw a band without bamboo flutes." "When we returned to the mountains, we said:" "We can do it too." "You know that we Minahassers are a proud people." "We always want to make progress." "We always want to be present." "That's right." "The people of Minahassa always want to get their way just like the sound of the instrument." "We're going to do some tuning, grandad." "The Dutch brought us civilization." "How to dress how to behave the Christian faith..." "So we got all our civilization from the Dutch." "At that time, I worked in the Commissioner's office as a young clerk." "One day, I was given the assignment to be present at the Dutch club." "When I came there I was given the assignment to learn with the others." "I said:" "I'm not used to dancing." "I was told:" "My wife will teach you." "I felt shy because I had never done that sort of thing before." "We began with a waltz." "You must hold yourself so." "The next tune was the foxtrot." "You must hold yourself so." "Then I had to practise with other ladies..." ""Yes, you may dance with Madam"..." "I'd never been used to that, of course." "But you're in a hotel, in respectable surroundings." "I saw that everything was very decent and I found that attractive." "You must be good and you must be decent." "That's the main thing." "Cars and buses full of eager spectators who want to watch from close up..." "Countless cyclists..." "On 7 January, 1937 Juliana, Princess of Orange marries Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld in The Hague." "The whole of the Minahassa shares that fairy tale." "A train stops in the moor in the eastern Netherlands." "Hundreds of unemployed step out of the train." "They are going to a work project." "They are removed from a demoralizing existence even though only for a few weeks." "They will probably be better fed than at home." "The preparation for a wedding is very important." "If all goes well with that, it's a good sign." "But if you do something wrong people start making judgements about your future." "We want to do everything as well as possible on this evening." "It's a good start for our future." "My desire for the future is that we will work hard do our best and, of course, pray." "We mustn't cast aside our parents' knowledge." "They have the experience." "We can only add something to what already exists." "To achieve our aim in life a close relationship is necessary." "The two of us together, but also as a family." "I hope that the relationship remains close." "In my opinion, that's the most important precondition for a happy life." "Both families must work together towards this goal." "There must be strong ties between both families and between Jimmy and me." "The great tree is down, children." "The great tree is down." "It hurts." "There he goes." "There he goes." "It hurts." "When he pays his debts he'll be free again..." "Look at this!" "Kofi Donkyi's tuba is ridiculous." "Old as the itch." "Just welding and earning money." "Dami!" "I'm going to have a wash." "I have to go to the rehearsal." "You must do it like this." "Watch out!" "Be careful!" "Kwamena, look!" "Put it over there." "Let's go." "This yellow symbolizes gold." "If you look at a black continent, Africa you'll see that the richest gold deposits are in Ghana." "Our elders have shown us that gold is highly valued by all peoples." "How did they use to call our country?" "The Gold Coast." "Below that, you see the green." "Green symbolizes the crops, the vegetation." "If you look at the leaves of the trees, what do you see?" "Green." "But why is that black star in the middle of the gold?" "If you compare us with the whites what is the color of their skin?" " White." "The Ghanaians have black skin, like all Africans." "So they looked at the black skin and made the black star." "Do you understand?" "I've just made love to a beautiful white girl, at home." "Kwame only wants to do it with white women." "He's always in for a piece of ass." "Wiith whom are you going to drink gin?" "Do you have money for the gin?" "For the gin, yes." "But not for the oil." "Ask your wife for it." "Say that it's for the engine oil." "Where are your bowls?" "Shall I serve it?" "We'll do it together." "What would you like?" "Soup?" "Oh, I'll eat anything." "Whose bowl is this?" "Yours?" "And this one?" " It belongs to this sister." "You should bring your own bowl." "Now you say that you don't have one." "Sister, I've got a bowl for you." "Just give it to her." "Where's yours?" " It's under there." "My mother took my bowl." "She's sitting outside, under the tree." "Has everyone got their food?" "Then we'll go." "God be with you." "Mother is still sitting under the tree." "I always have such big children." "He has a big head." "They thought that I'd get twins." "So they called me Mother of Twins." "My belly was big and glowing." "The delivery was difficult." "I thought I was going to die." "But what is given by life can't just be taken by death." "Thank God you and your child both survived." "It's a gift of God." "God isn't like people." "His love is different." "What's difficult for people is easy for God." "We should praise him every day." "Were it not for God, we'd all be dead." "We must have that money quickly." "I think we should ask for more money." "Esi's mother has to be careful." "Hasn't she paid everything, then?" " No." "She hasn't paid." "That's no way to behave." "Tomorrow, we have to go to sea early." "Yes, at half past five." "So early?" " Such a fuss for so little money." "They have no respect for us." "They're even reluctant to reimburse our petrol costs." "Hello everyone."