My first memories of playing records are connected with my father, who loved jazz and owned an impressive record collection. He taught me a lot about the ’50s, ‘60s and ‘70s styles of jazz.
Thanks to a few music loving friends and some special late night radio programs that I listened to in my teenage period, I discovered the new wave, electro, avant-garde, Krautrock, dub, ambient, post-industrial … and I started building my record collection. In the early ‘90s I visited house parties around Ghent, Boccaccio and Café d’Anvers clubs. Influenced by the new style of music that was played there, I started to DJ together with my boyfriend as a duo Smos and Baby Bee. We were working together as professional DJs until 2011, when I decided to stop with it to pursue other goals in my life.
Jazzbelle is my recent freestyle DJ project that is not aimed at the dance floor but to listening pleasure. As the name associates, I am mainly playing jazz and its many sub-genres. Sometimes I enjoy creating a set focused on the specific jazz style or another music style that is influenced by jazz, although my music choice is hardly ever about strict following of only one style, but rather creating an interesting musical story. Jazzbelle stimulates me to search my immense music collection, rediscover the tracks that I haven’t listened to for a while, and put them together in the set that is like a journey in my music world.
Music, like all good things in life, is best enjoyed when shared.
