It has been a topic of discussion among Brabanders for years: is our dialect disappearing? One language expert thinks so, while another study contradicts this. Yet that is no reason for Patrick Marcelissen, singer of the WC Experience, to sing in Dutch from now on. “I don’t know if it will disappear. I do notice that we are also very popular among young people,” he says in the Omroep Brabant podcast From Us.
The music of the WC Experience has been passed on from generation to generation. “There are now children of fans who know us from the past,” Marcelissen explains. “Of course, those parents used to play our music until the end of the day. And those children sat in the back of the car and had to put up with it all.”
And so children who may not necessarily speak a dialect themselves, sing along with the WC Experience. In any case, letting go of the dialect itself is not an option for the band. “I can speak Dutch, but singing Dutch would be a joke.”
The fact that the WC Experience is Brabant through and through is also evident from the repertoire. In 2009 the band released an ode to the province for the first time Brabant Laand. A cover of the American singer Bruce Springsteen. “I am a Springsteen fan through and through, he has the song American country.”, singer Marcelissen explains. ‘America’ was changed to ‘Brabant’ and an ode was soon created. “Then you get into the pen and then this comes out. I find it very easy to put that feeling on paper.”
More than fifteen years later a second ode was added: Brabant. “I looked for the most important characteristics of the province. I Googled that.”
That search yielded terms such as: Bossche bollen, sausage bread, the soft g and the Brabant quarter. The band has incorporated all these terms into the song and that provides a striking ode to our beautiful province. The song was immediately embraced by the fans and, as icing on the cake, it became the opening music of the Omroep Brabant podcast From Us.
Listen to (and watch) the episode of ‘Van Ons’ with Patrick Marcelissen in your favorite podcast app, on YouTube or below:
From Us
In the podcast ‘Van Ons’, presenter Jasper Stads, together with ten well-known Brabanders, searches for the ‘feeling of here’. Why do we feel so closely connected to the province? And when are you a real Brabander?
Subscribe in your favorite podcast app and get a new episode every Thursday. And… the podcast is also available on YouTube and Spotify with images!
