I never really stopped making music.
The machines changed. The software changed. The way I worked changed. The curiosity stayed exactly the same.
Music has been part of my life for more than twenty-five years - and it started well before that, at six years old, watching my father's band play from the side of the stage.
What began there ended up here - roots reggae from Rotterdam, with a family line running through Suriname back to India.
Tjipkali is not the beginning of that journey. It's the next chapter.
Chapter 01
Watching
From age six
Before I made anything, I watched. My father played in a band, and I went along - big halls, big stages, and a small boy standing at the side where he could see everything.
That's where I found the instrument I still love most. A drum kit was drums. Percussion was percussion. But the SPD (digital drum pad) was both at once, and it had synth sounds on top of that. One instrument that refused to pick a side.
I didn't know it yet, but I'd spend the next twenty-five years doing exactly that.
Chapter 02
Tape and Radio
1990s
It started with two VHS recorders and the radio. Three-hour tapes that held six hours on long play - recording for a full evening, cutting out the commercials, splicing the songs back together into one continuous mix.
No software. No undo button. Just patience and a pause key.
Chapter 03
The PC
2000 - 2005
The first real experiments moved to a computer. A wave editor, and nothing else: cutting and pasting straight into the waveform, with no snap and no grid to catch me. Every edit landed exactly where I put it, which meant every edit had to be judged by ear.
Mixing tracks, pulling sounds apart, trying to understand how music was actually put together. There was no instant generation and no endless library of ready-made possibilities. Just a PC, music and curiosity.
Chapter 04
The Band
2005 - 2010
After trying a few, I found the right one and stayed five years. Playing with other people changes how you hear everything - timing, space, and above all when not to play.
Somewhere in those years I moved from playing and mixing other people's music to producing my own.
Chapter 05
The Detour
2010 - 2015
I left the band and started a business. Producing slid into second place, the way things do when life gets loud. The music never stopped completely - it just got quieter for a while.
Chapter 06
Learning by Listening
2015 - 2020
Production grew again, and it grew in an unexpected way: by working with music in languages I didn't speak. I couldn't follow the words, but I understood the feeling.
That taught me something I still use every day - the message travels before the language does.
Chapter 07
Back to First Place
2020 - 2025
Music moved back to the front of my life, and the production went up like a rocket. More than 250 instrumental tracks, often built around vocals performed by other people. For years I made music for others simply because I could, and because I like helping people get their ideas out of their head and into the world.
Somewhere in there the question changed. Not can I make this, but does this need to exist. I made a lot, kept very little, and slowly started separating what was impressive from what was actually moving.
Chapter 08
Tjipkali
2026
Before this chapter there was a darker one. Twenty years of building came down in three days, and what was left was ash.
I put my faith in the fire. This is what came back.
Songs, built from family stories - the love we show but never say. Five singles, each cover moving one step from ash to gold, building toward an album.
Twenty-five years to get here. Still the same curiosity.