The Music of the Netherlands Antilles. Jan Brokken

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       You Can Tell Just by Listening, Can’t You?

      Six years earlier, in July 1993, I had settled in Curaçao for an indefinite period of time, for no immediate reason, or maybe because of the melting pot of influences and cultures that make the islands in the southern Caribbean Sea seem so much larger than they really are. On those narrow strips of volcanic rock Europe, Africa, and South America merge, like solidified lava that owes its existence to various eruptions.

      Curaçao lies so close to the South American coast that on certain days, usually after the rainy season, during the arid months of January, February, and March, you can see the mountains of Venezuela on the horizon, like a jagged edge above the water. You get the feeling of being able to touch the continent simply by leaning forward.

      You notice the proximity of Latin America in everything, from the language spoken on the Leeward Islands and the flamboyant colors of the houses to the manners and mind-set. In contrast, the houses themselves, with their clock or step gables, the government buildings in neo-classical style, the brick offices built according to the principles of New Objectivity, the streets straight as arrows, the narrow alleyways and stately squares, all betray ties to Europe. Curaçao is multifaceted in a unique way: it unifies differences without removing them.

      I spent my first three months there in a wooden house, in a village with the dreamy name of Lagun, at the foot of seven hills that form the coastline of the western part of the island, and at the mouth of a broad body of water with a mangrove swamp. It was as pretty as a picture postcard there and quiet, so quiet the only visits I got were on Sunday afternoons. For born and bred Curaçaoans I was living at the end of the world, or in any case too far from the capital city. Thirty kilometers separated me from the social and cultural heart of the island, which was only noticeably beating in downtown Willemstad. I realized that if I did not want to completely cut myself off, I had better move.

      It was not all that hard to do. The house was in a deplorable state and I never succeeded in driving away the regular tenants—mice, rats, and iguanas. The corrugated iron roof leaked, the nylon-wool pile carpeting stank, the ceiling sagged and cracked under the weight of prehistoric reptiles. Even the peace and quiet was relative: I lay awake half the night wondering whether the crack junkie would roll the sliding door off its runners again, trying to scrape together a meal in my kitchen. Once he opened the wrong door and came into my bedroom. I must admit, he apologized profusely on the spot and took off faster than I could jump out of bed, though holding a knife in his hand, and from that point on I never felt completely safe.

      I did, however, have to say farewell to an unencumbered view of the turquoise sea and four sheltered bays in the immediate vicinity. I could see the bay at Jerémi from my window, and every morning I was witness to a brua ritual. Under a dividivi tree bent by the wind that cast a long shadow across the beach, an elderly woman knelt, setting out her sacred stones and offering her sacrifice, usually a chicken whose throat had just been cut. She was seldom disturbed; a property developer had recently bought the land surrounding the bay and had closed off the entrance to the narrow beach with an iron fence. Brua literally means witchcraft; it is related to voodoo and practiced by the descendants of slaves. To me it felt like a piece of Africa had moved here with me, since before living in the Dutch Antilles I had seen animist priests offering the same sacrifices in the savannahs of Burkina Faso, Mali, Ivory Coast, and the jungles of Gabon. My move to the city cut me off from those rituals—brua was practiced only outside the villages or in the Hato caves—and in a certain sense brought me that much closer to Europe.

      After looking for several weeks, I finally found a bungalow on the northern outskirts of Willemstad in a genuine middle-class Curaçaoan neighborhood. I got a one-year lease on a house in Kaya Tapakonchi from the sculptress Hortence Brouwn, who was just about to leave for Italy to buy marble and spend the entire winter, spring, and summer chipping away at it in Tuscany, in the direct vicinity of all the works of Michelangelo. Hortence had grown up in Suriname, which I could tell by a glance at framed photographs hanging on the walls of her hallway that held pictures of her black father and Javanese mother clad impeccably in white, standing in Paramaribo in front of their white house, a wooden building with a spacious porch. These photographs were from the colonial era—and I understood why they made Hortence feel homesick when she told me of her flight from the country. In 1981, her partner, a young lawyer, had made critical remarks about the military regime, and in 1982 he was one of the victims of the December murders.* Before the end of the year, Hortence fled to Curaçao, followed in exodus by several hundred fellow Surinamese in 1983 and 1984.

      In her new surroundings Hortence became fascinated by the monumental breasts of Antillean women, perhaps because she herself so was slender. She duplicated the shapes in white, gray, and black stone. Her yard was full of them: breasts bereft of their pedestals. Immediately behind the statues stretched the mondi,* full of man-sized, arid, prickly cacti, that only served to heighten the contrast. But I did not choose the house because of seductive torsos in a prickly décor, nor for the plaster statue on the porch of a woman with a matriarchal bosom and gigantic buttocks.

      There was a piano in the living room, a tropic-proof Pleyel. No sooner had I moved into Hortence’s bungalow than I slid behind the keys. It was just as hot late that evening as it had been halfway through the afternoon; the doors and shutters were all wide open, and the sounds of the piano must have been clearly audible at some distance. The bungalow had no windows.

      The next morning the neighbor came to introduce himself. “It’s great to have you as a neighbor,” he said, “you are a real yu di Kórsou.”* A native child? A child of Curaçao? He noticed my astonishment and smiled at me as though I could not fool him. “I heard you playing last night and you were playing our music.” Well now, I thought, this guy must have balls of cotton in his ears, because I had been indulging myself in a couple of mazurkas by Chopin.

      I said nothing. I considered it a stroke of good fortune the neighbor had not complained about my playing so loud, or at having played at such a late hour.

      And so I remained in ignorant bliss for weeks on end.

      Like most newcomers I thought Curaçaoans only danced to salsa and merengue. Whenever I switched on the car radio all I heard were the imported hits from Venezuela, Colombia, and Santo Domingo, interspersed with the occasional Venezuelan bolero or Cuban son. The only thing that surprised me at first was the ease with which my neighbors could indicate what the various rhythms were.

      Behind the hedge of cacti in the mondi, at a distance of about one and a half kilometers, were the huge festival grounds. Whenever a band was playing, my mattress trembled on waves of sound. On one occasion Kassav were playing, a group from Guadeloupe who played practically every number in the beat of their local rhythm known as zouk. The show lasted into the wee hours. “Had a great time dancing,” said my neighbor the next morning. Just like me, she had been unable to fall asleep because of the constant thumping sound, but instead of tossing and turning in bed, Noris, a school teacher in her late forties, had got out of bed and let her feet pitter-patter across the cement floor of her porch.

      “Do you know how to dance zouk?” I asked.

      She clapped her hands, bellowing with delight: “Ay Dios, no; you can tell just by listening, can’t you?!”

      My neighbor—who lived in between Noris and me—could also tell just by listening that first evening. I had been playing a certain rhythm. I had played mazurkas. Music to dance to. Caribbean music.

      3

       The Faintest Idea

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