This Rapalje show is about my past before Rapalje
And the beginning of Rapalje
There are some questions which you asked to me
I hope to answer all of them of course
but I can't answer all of them
And I'll show you some some real neat stuff that I used to do
Well, I started as a mucisian actually when I was 2 years old. My parents had a
piano in the house and well, as a kid, you can you get curious so you start
playing with one finger on it and well that was a bit boring after a while so you
start playing with two fingers and then use even more fingers and in the end you
seems to use ten fingers on the piano so you can do almost anything on the piano
so that's what I started and then I met someone
wou played the guitar. I thought, that's good, that's good I wanted to learn the
guitar so I learnt me to play the guitar and then we just started the
band. The band was called "April" we had well, not very many gigs but we wrote all
our songs and there there were actually good songs. It wasn't a bad band but
then, then I met Maceál and yeah, well, where were a bit bored with
pop music so we thought: folk music! because we just discovered it in the
Irish pub in Groninge. We just discovered folk music so we thought folk music
that's a good thing to do, right? Let's do that! But, well you need folk instruments
and you need to be able to play them as well. And, we didn't. Of course Maceál
played the guitar. I thought accordion, fiddle, tin whistle
And I said to Maceál, you have to play the Squeezebox. that's good because fiddle
and squeezebox that's something that goes together so very, very well
So that's actually what we did. So we we actually created a band. It was a
bit of fusion between my old band and, well, Let's say, the beginning of Rapalje. it
was called "Bates Motel" but Maceál and me, we weren't very
satisfied with the band so we kicked everyone out and well the two of us were
left over from it. so what we did is, played in bars and on
the street because Maceál had experiences as a street musician and
playing in bars and just going around with the hat and
getting a little bit of money or a lot of money so I learned later, so he said:
now,come on! let's do that! and come on just go on! he got me on a stage
somewhere in a cafe with my violin and I actually never played the
violin before. I just got it that day I rang him up and I said: I've got a violin!
He said: OK, come on, we're going to do a performance/ I said: no no I have to practice and then
he just hung up and he got to me and, well, we played and, well, that's
actually a bit how it started. so we started out as a duo on the streets and
in pubs and then it got bigger and bigger
we've got guest musicians: William was first a guest musicians. we changed our
name from "Ruk and Pluk" to "De eikeltjes aldus Ronald". We got a lot
of crazy names at that time. but then we thought something more serious. actually
it never got any more serious than Rapalje and that's not very serious
actually. but it is to us! so what we did: we went to a library and, well, went
through a lot of dictionaries searching for a good name for our future band. it
should have been something like rascals. and so we found that. because it's a very
good translation from Rascals is Rapalje and that's, Maceál found it in a
dictionary and we were cheering: well that's the name! that's what we want! so
that's the name Rapalje. came out of a dictionary. because we were looking for
, well, something more decent than "Ruk en Pluk"
I was playing so loudly on the violin that Maceál needed amplification for his
instrument so, well, I had to play even louder than that because he was
getting louder and louder: new batteries and all high-tech stuff on that. so I
thought of a trick to get my violin four times as loud as it was acoustically. and
I'm going to show you now how that's done
I do play in Rapalje, well not as much instruments as I can play
actually. I'm a very lazy person. no no, that's what I am, but that's not the
reason for it. my colleagues play a lot of instruments and I don't
want to double these instruments so my main instrument is the violin. or the
fiddle, if you wish, because it's folk music but I also play the tea-chest-bass
and sometimes the tin whistle. so when you do start a folk band. well, Maceál and me,
we thought: you have to look folky as well. I'm wearing a Polish folk
vest of something, I don't know how you call it, but it's folk, it's really
folk, but it's Polish and, actually, I started out with this but then we
thought: no no, we we need something more Celtic or Irish or
Scottish. so obviously, we went wearing kilts. but we didn't want the modern
normal kills. we wanted something more exotic with the kilts. so at that time we
looked at the film Braveheart. that was a hit at that time. yes, a long time ago, I
know. and we actually a bit of copied the
style of kilt wearing from that film. from that movie. and they actually just
made it up for that movie. it's not historically correct as far as I know
but it could have been possible. that's what we're wearing nowadays: the kilts
"Braveheart style". we call it now "Rapalje style". but we didn't want to wear a
tartan from an existing clan of the Scots because, well, as you probably know
we're from the Netherlands. and it's not a good idea it's just copy
someone else's tartan and his family name and stuff like that. so, what we
wanted to do is create our own tartan. so I made our own tartan and I thought we
can use our own colours: the colours you like. My kilt is quite brown. Maceál's
kilt this is redish. William's kilt is green. like Davis kilt is more blue. so
they chose their own colours. When I made the tartan then we all used
the same pattern on it so we got our own tartan: Rapalje clan tartan
and we actually registered it on the scottish database of Tartans. so if you
want to see that: You can look it up.
some people wonder why I wear the kilt the other way around as
my colleagues. I've got the flap on this side and the rest on this side
originally you should wear it on this side. so I'm on the wrong side here. but try to
play the violin with a flap of kilt cloth beneath it. it's not working at all
so that's why I changed it around. but later I found out it has another meaning:
the head of the clan used to wear it the other way around
so who knows? I've got a question about the length of the kills, actually well,
how its put together. normally, the length of the kilt is 10 meters of cloth. that's
the same with us, but well, you just got the dress part, let's say the dress part,
and then you've got some metres left and you just threw it over your shoulder. we
already made a video where you can see how I put it on.
"Be easy and free when you're drinking with me"
that's what we sing in the song "Jock Stuart" and you
can make a lot of great sentences from the idea of be easy and free but with me,
come on, I'm Dieb
Be easy and free when you're drinking with me. Cheers!
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