Villa Les Clématites

Bart Peeters: "It was here in villa Les Clématites that the Sfinks Festival was born. From '75 to '80, the largest folk festival in Europe was organized here, after that of Cambridge. The Chieftains, Dan Ar Braz, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Martin Carthy,... I've seen all these mythical figures play here. This created a misconception in my head: I thought that music was by definition folk music. And if it had to rock, you could go to Fairport Convention, the first folk-rock group. In the early 1980s, Sfinks became a world music festival, and big names such as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Ruben Blades, Queen Ida and Baaba Maal arrived. Once it became a world music festival, the organizers also had to find additional instruments, because most of those artists had long been happy to bring their washboard from Louisiana. There was only one drummer living in Boechout at the time, so I was allowed to lend my drum kit. That allowed me to fraternize with those fantastic drummers. But even then, for years I thought that music is a combination of folk and world music. That's about what I'm doing now. In short, the Sfinks Festival has had a huge influence on my own musical development."

Joe