{"id":10977,"date":"2012-04-12T10:18:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T10:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress72\/?p=21301"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:34","slug":"wouter-hamel-on-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2012\/04\/12\/wouter-hamel-on-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Wouter Hamel on stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Studium Generale and Erasmus Cultuur offer a wide variety of tickets to theatre shows, such as orchestras, bands or dancing performances. EM visited one of these performances and went to a concert of Wouter Hamel, a young Dutch jazz\/pop singer. <\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, I\u2019m not really a jazz-singer,\u201d, Wouter says, smiling: \u201cThere\u2019s a strict jazz police in Holland, that doesn\u2019t think I improvise enough to really be \u2018jazz\u2019. But I do dig jazz music, a lot.\u201d Even though the critics may say that Hamel isn\u2019t part of the jazz scene, he has been named \u2018the Dutch Jamie Cullum\u2019, has won the Dutch Jazz Vocalist Competition in 2005 and attracts a wide audience, including many jazz fans: \u201cMy granny always says my music reminds her of her glory days, which is quite a compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japanese Hamel fans<\/b><\/p>\n

Hamel has toured a lot recently, as he has a huge fan base in South-East Asia. It all started in Japan, where a DJ at a local jazz radio station in Tokyo played his music. The buzz started, and soon enough, he found himself sitting in a plane to Japan to play for an Asian audience. \u201cIt always feels weird to get onto a plane in Amsterdam, travel over all these countries who don\u2019t know us to go play in Japan for weeks.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u00a0 says the Asian audiences are very different from Dutch ones, as people in Asia pay much more attention to the show, are really quiet and clap only when they\u2019re supposed to. According to Hamel, Dutch audiences can be fun\u00a0 as they are quite spontaneous, but also annoy foreign artists who come to play in the Netherlands: \u201cDutch people do pay 40 Euros for a ticket, but just keep on Tweeting and talking throughout a concert. They decide when they\u2019re going to be quiet, not the performer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven Rihanna is a niche\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

We ask Hamel what kind of music he listens to at home. He says that he enjoys many different types of music, from alternative bands to dirty hiphop although he admits, being 34 years old now, he doesn\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on in the student music scene anymore: \u201cThe funny thing is that everything is a niche now, even a singer like Rihanna. Music that everybody listens to simply doesn\u2019t exist anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dancing in a theatre<\/b><\/p>\n

Hamel performs with five other musicians, who all play a wide variety of different instruments. The public is a mixture of everything, even foreign students can be found. Throughout the concert Hamel explains what his songs are about, and points out the unusual instruments the band members have collected from all over the world. After two hours of up-beat jazzy tunes mixed with more mellow and emotional songs, the band gets a massive standing ovation, young and old clapping and dancing to the music. Not something you often see in a classic theatre setting. IS<\/p>\n\n\t

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