Zwerver Toasaves

• 1 Als ik zou sterven 07:17
• 2 Sanderjon en de boerin 03:48
• 3 La Tierche Estampie Roial 02:50
• 4 De Zwerver 05:31
• 5 Het Regent Zeer 04:45
• 6 Het Daghet In Den Oosten 03:39
• 7 T Zoud een meiske gaan om wyn 06:03
• 8 Ik sta al jaren in de regen 07:59
• 9 Romance de Isabel 04:20
• 10 Belicha Istanpitta 05:30
• 11 Onder de Lindeboom Groene 03:50
• 12 Cypriotische dans 01:36
• Total Runtime 57:08

Info for Zwerver

Toasaves is a Belgian music collective with a fascination for archaic Flemish folk songs and their relationship to early music and Eastern music. Toasaves is written phonetically and means “home ports” in the Antwerp dialect. The band was founded in early 2021 by oud player and artistic director Tristan Driessens. It brings together nine musicians from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey and Cyprus, each with a broad artistic background and expertise. On the first album “Zwerver” (wanderer in Dutch), Toasaves starts from the compositions and the ‘Groot Liedboek’ by Wannes van de Velde (1937-2008), the singer-songwriter who blew new life into the oldest surviving ballads and litanies in his home port of Antwerp . Tristan Driessens wrote new arrangements of both anonymous medieval songs and original work by Van de Velde. It goes without saying that an eclectic dialogue with the East, which runs like a red thread through Driessens' career, was not missing. It ties in with the nomadic spirit and openness of Wannes van de Velde, and reveals and reinforces the primal power of the early music repertoires.

The Toasaves’ exceptionally rich and rare set of instruments fulfills a connecting function . Thanks to virtuoso performances on traditional instruments from East and West – Medieval flutes, drums, cisterns and fiddles, Oriental violin, Turkish lutes (lavta and 'ûd) and frame drums (daf, bendir, pandero cuadrado), hurdy-gurdy, Flemish and Irish bagpipes, Indian dilruba and bansuri, Afghan rebab, Persian santur, ... – new light is shed on the actual source of musical traditions that, separated in time and space, often contain the same poetic and musical secrets. Starting from the folk repertoire of Wannes van de Velde, the travelling companions surprise us by mixing it with early music, traditional dance music from the Greek islands, classical court music (makam) from Istanbul and even folk music from Afghanistan.

Toasaves:
Dick van der Harst, bodhran, pandero cuadrado, tambourine, bells and sticks
Driessens, Tristan, ‘ûd, lavta, vocals, arrangements, artistic direction
Eugénie De Mey, vocals
Harald Bauweraerts, hurdy gurdy, vocals
Michalis Kouloumis, violin
Michaël Grébil Liberg, bow cistre, Corsican cetera, Medieval lute, fiddle, Afghan rebab, vocals
Miriam Encinas Laffitte, dilruba, recorders, fiddle, daf, pandero cuadrado, bendir, santur
Pierre Hamon, Medieval flutes, tambourin, bansuri
Raphaël De Cock, vocals, flemish bagpipes, uilleann pipes, mouth harp

Toasaves
is a Belgian music collective with a fascination for medieval Flemish song and its relationship to both Early Music – Trecento, Ars Nova and Flemish Polyphony – and modal music from the East. Toasaves is phonetic and means “home land” in the Antwerp accent. The ensemble was founded by oud player and musicologist Tristan Driessens and brings together a dozen artists from different countries and traditions, each with a broad artistic background and expertise. In April 2021, Toasaves recorded their debut album “Zwerver“, which will be released on the Muziekpublique record label on November 26th, 2022.

“Zwerver” starts from the Groot Liedboek of Wannes van de Velde (1937-2008), the singer-artist who breathed new life into the oldest surviving Flemish ballads. Together with multi-instrumentalist Raphaël De Cock, composer Dick van der Harst and modern troubadour Michaël Grébil, Tristan Driessens wrote new arrangements of anonymous medieval songs as well as original work by Van de Velde. It goes without saying that the dialogue with Eastern music culture, which runs like a thread through Driessens’ career, was not avoided. In keeping with the adventurous spirit of Wannes van de Velde, Toasaves sees in the exploration of cultural heterogeneity a wealth of possibilities that can reveal and reinforce the primal power of Early Music repertoires from a new perspective.

The rich instruments in combination with the unorthodox singing styles of Toasaves fulfill a connecting function in this. Thanks to virtuoso performances on Early Music instruments from both East and West – Medieval flutes, drums, cisters and fiddles, Oriental violins, lutes and frame drums, hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes, Indian dilruba and bansuri, etc …, new light is shed on musical traditions that, in time and space separated from each other, translate the same poetic and musical secrets. Starting from the folk repertoire of Wannes van de Velde’s Groot Liedboek, Toasaves joins in with the first masters of Early Music – Landini, Thomas Fabri, Guillaume de Machaut, … and the classical and popular music genres from the Greek islands, the Sephardic Diaspora, the Black Sea and the Ottoman Court.

This album contains no booklet.