The anniversary of music festival Breda Barst was postponed twice by corona, but next weekend will be the 25th edition. The organization hopes for about 40,000 visitors and will make something beautiful out of it. Chairman and programmer Jurgen Blommaert cherishes the Valkenberg City Park as a special location and never wants to leave it.
While Jurgen Blommaert is walking through the park, he stops every now and then to tamp down some mud. It is clear that there will be rain this weekend. The only question is when and how much.
“We must be lucky”, says the chairman of Breda Barst, who sees the festival site being built. “I can’t control that, so I don’t worry about it. There will probably be enough people and it will be fun again.”
“People spontaneously came to help.”
Yet Jurgen’s most beautiful memory of a quarter of a century of Breda Barst mainly has to do with rain. “The high point was also the low point,” he says.
“Five years ago, the day before the festival, we were attacked by a terrible splash of water. The rain meant that we had to draw 55,000 liters of water from the park at night. It was really bizarre and there was panic. But then you see how the festival lives in the city. People spontaneously came to help and went home completely covered in mud. The days after it was fairly sunny and it still turned out to be a successful festival.”
As an organisation, Breda Barst does not have the ambition to grow larger. However, the Valkenberg is cherished as a location. There is no fear that the municipality will direct the music festival to the Breepark event site. That will happen to Brand Parkies next year, the also free music event that fills the park every Tuesday evening in the summer.
“The municipality knows that we will not make a mess of the Valkenberg Park.”
“I’m not afraid of that,” Jurgen Blommaert says firmly. “We once came to Valkenberg and we will never leave again. The park is a unique location and yet gives a different atmosphere than the parking lot at NAC or Breepark. Everyone has read that Parkies made a mess of it in the city park and we don’t do that. We take the extra costs for granted. The municipality knows that.”
To celebrate 25 years of Breda Barst, Blommaert and his volunteers have added an extra day to the music festival. Friday evening has been added, but unlike Saturday and Sunday it is not free. “We wanted to do something special and there are bands that are actually a bit too expensive for us,” explains Blommaert.
But according to him, the program is finger-licking good. Besides crowd puller Jett Rebel, all eyes are on Selah Sue. “She was on Pinkpop and Pukkelpop. That’s what it says here at our little festival! I think it will be a very special show.”
After two years of corona, Breda Barst will undoubtedly be fine. The event can always count on a hard core of regular visitors. Blommaert makes this clear while walking past the most famous bandstand of the free festival: the Spanish Collar. “I don’t explain that name,” laughs Jurgen. “People should look that up on the internet. But there is a permanent guard of about five hundred men every year.” And that’s just the smallest stage.
