north sea jazz part III

And then the last day had already arrived. Loaded with energy from the good breakfast we ordered at the camping (bread, cheese, ham, an egg, juice and coffee) we headed to Ahoy again. It was raining men, so we had to wait for a little while. We couldn't wait to see the last artists of the weekend. A few of them we had already seen last year but that didn't matter, we loved them and that's all that counts, right?

Firstly, we went to see The Kyteman Orchestra. Of course I knew Kyteman, especially from the song 'Sorry', which is a brilliant song by the way, but I didn't have any expectations. No good ones, but no bad ones either. Eventually it turned out to be one of the best concerts I have ever been to. What an ambiance, what a sound, what an energy.

Kyteman, who is a young Dutch musician, really is a genius to me. As fragile as he looks, he manages to lead an entire orchestra (which was really big) and in that way, produces a gigantic bombastic sound which blows everyone away. The hour we saw him, we saw millions of different things. Rappers entering the stage, French rappers, classical music, real jazz, a jam session (for about ten minutes they improvised about everything they played). Yes, the beginning of the day was set.



Next up was Waylon, who is also a Dutch artist. We saw him two years ago at North Sea, and after that another time in our region, and I really like his sound. He's the first Dutch artist that is signed with the legendary Motown label. His sound is country, rock and soul.


Again he was amazing, he looked a bit more classy and smart this time (I prefered the way he looked last time, a bit more messy, but of course that's not what it's about at a concert). He played a lot of songs of his newest record, 'After All', and he did that in a great way. I also loved his band, especially the guitarist gave a few powerful solos.


After Waylon, it was time for one of the artists we had looked forward to most: Janelle Monaé. We had seen her last year at North Sea and she gave probably the best show I had ever seen. She did that again this time. Though almost everything was the same as last year: the costumes, the acts, the songs and even the fact that she stagedived and made everyone crouch, she was fabulous again.


I sang every song along, from her own songs like 'Cold War', 'Sincerely, Jane' and 'Come Alive' to the covers she did, like 'I want you back' and 'Smile'. I have so much respect for her, she is so real and she has her own style and way of behaving.


After our dinner, which was really a pizza, but it was delicious, I had one with tuna, we headed for the concert of D'Angelo. I knew D'Angelo mainly from his song 'Brown Sugar'. He was famous in the nineties and since then not a lot has been heard from him.

D'Angelo was almost an hour late, so the audience (including us) wasn't very happy. At one moment, everyone was booing and so the ambiance wasn't really good. Eventually the man showed up and we decided to give him another chance. He was much more chubby and tough looking than I had expected him to be, I thought he was more the type: pretty boy. Anyway, his voice was still marvelous, real nice and soft.

At last we saw a little act of Maceo Parker, but we decided to go to Aloe Blacc, who is more uptempo. I knew him as well only from one song: 'I need a dollar', but his other songs were really nice too. Yes, I had a great time. And I swear we (that is: me and Aloe Blacc) made eye contact for, well more than one time. He was probably thinking: what is her problem? But it was really nice anyway ;)

We stayed as long as we could because we were so scared we would feel extremely depressed when we had to leave. A weekend of music, peace and freedom. Like Bob Marley said: 'One could thing about music: when it hits, you feel no pain'. And that's so true. Eventually the exhaustion took over and we went back to the camping. But it was a fabulous weekend (I just love that word) and will be back next year. For sure.