#389 Erkenningsnummer P708816
jULY 15, 2015 \ newsweekly - € 0,75 \ read more at www.flanderstoday.eu current affairs \ p2
30,000th time’s the charm
politics \ p4
BUSiNESS \ p6
innovation \ p7
The cellular level
education \ p9
art & living \ p10
Team spirit
Ypres’ Last Post ceremony took place for the 30,000th time last week, with the whole world watching
Is radiation from our mobile phones giving us cancer? We pose the question to a member of a new expert panel
Veerle Baetens and several other Flemish actors join Denmark for a Scandinavian-style TV thriller
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What you see is what you hear Composer Wim Mertens on 35 years – and 50 albums – as an outsider Christophe Verbiest More articles by Christophe \ flanderstoday.eu
As he releases his latest album – part one of an ambitious trilogy – Wim Mertens, one of Flanders’ most famous composers, talks about a life spent in music, the importance of politics in art and understanding through listening.
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© Piet Goethals
or 35 years, Wim Mertens has been one of Flanders’ most famous composers. Yet after all that time, he still seems to be an outsider: not classical enough for the classical music world; too classical for the world of pop. He did have some crossover successes in the 1980s, in particular with Struggle for Pleasure, the album by his ensemble Soft Verdict. Years later, the title track was used as a jingle by mobile phone operator Proximus, becoming one of the most widely known tunes in the country. Mertens (pictured) kept on working solo as well and now has some 50 albums to his name, some made up of several CDs. He’s just released Charaktersketch – the title is German – which is the first part of a trilogy. “For the first time in my life, I wanted to produce something that referred to both politics and the arts,” explains Mertens, who, in the first half of the 1970s, studied political and social sciences at the University of Leuven. “What’s the position of the arts – music, literature, paintings – versus the powers that be? That’s what I want to discuss in this trilogy, with only music.” The second part, What Are We, Locks to Do?, is a solo album inspired by the work of the Greek poet Callimachus who, in the third century BC, developed in Alexandria’s famous library the first system to classify 300,000 scrolls. The album is already recorded and will be released next year, as will the third part, Dust of Truth, on which Mertens is still working. That final album is based on the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, where Octavianus’ fleet made mincemeat of Cleopatra’s, bringing Europe under Roman rule. Mertens: “If it had gone the other way, Europe would have come under Egyptian influence.” Charaktersketch, meanwhile, deals with the problems with which Europe is confronted today. At least, that’s what it says in the promotional text that came with my copy of the album. Since the record contains nine instrumental compositions and no reference to this subject matter in the booklet, I doubt if the listener would get this by just playing the CD. Mertens, though, is convinced it works perfectly. “I come from an intellectual background, but in 1980 I made the decision: What you see is what you hear,” the 62-yearold says. “Everything I want to say should be deduced from the music; you have to hear it. You have to understand me by listening.” Even so, can he elaborate on what’s he’s trying to say with Charaktersketch? “What I try to do is explained in the title: making a sketch of the character of Europe. Not an essay, since that would take a much more definitive form. A sketch is more suitable.” Europe, he continues, “isn’t the bulwark it used to be. On continued on page 5