A new, anything but slick name glossy opens with two sentences that reveal something about the main character. That is the Frisian-Groningen pop musician Meindert Talma, a modest man who goes his own way. The sentences: ‘Yes, dear people, there it is. After the Lindathe Matthijsthe Chantalthe youp and the Maarten is there now also the Meindertprobably a one-off magazine, associated with my 25th anniversary as an album artist.’
The tall man (2.04 meters) from Noordhorn made his debut in 1997 with the record Hundred points† A t instead of a d, that is also Meindert Talma, the idiosyncratic and highly original artist who built up an extensive oeuvre of (eighteen) records and a series of books, despite a total lack of glamour.
The glossy is first and foremost a liber amicorum, a book of friends in which fellow artists and old and new acquaintances reminisce with a smile. In between, the birthday girl comments. ‘The Netherlands’ most unknown pop star’ (Free Netherlands2011) unsurprisingly transfers all the credit to the people who have surrounded him for the past quarter century.
Almost all of them met in the ‘Club for the International Pop Underground’ Vera, the pop stage in Groningen where Talma performed for the first time with his band and made a name for herself. The location where he will play all his records in full this year was quickly chosen. ‘Because Vera belongs to me/us’.
Expect in the Meindert no juicy anecdotes about rock ‘n’ roll affairs with women and drink and drugs or other craziness. Talma is a craftsman who prefers not to put himself in the center and who makes music and writes lyrics because it makes him happy.
And yes, it is also about the band name from the early years that was once thought funny, Meindert Talma & The Negroes. It was a good name at the time, Talma writes, and he drew inspiration from it for a ‘happy uptempo song’, The N song† ‘The urge for mild absurdity and the unstoppable urge to conquer the Netherlands Muziekland came to the fore’.
Talma now sees it differently. “It took years before we realized that our name was a misjudgment. What was meant to be tough was an expression of racism, offensive to black people and people of color.’
Let’s forget about it. The last, Frisian, words are for the friend who introduced him to the Groningen pop scene, Nyk de Vries. ‘Dizze man is a genius. Meindert young ones, what in beautiful music and lyryk hast makke’.