Gibburt

The only radio station in the Netherlands that’s entirely about alternative music is KinkFM. Broadcasting for about 15 years now, it has gathered a small but steady crowd of listeners that can enjoy ‘mainstream’ alternative, but also more obscure genres, like ska, avant garde, metal and even contemporary poetry and literature. No other Dutch radio station treasures music beyond pop the way KinkFM does.

A few days ago the inspirator behind KinkFM died: Arjen Grolleman, aged 37. He went like his hero John Balance from Coil: at home, fallen from the stairs, breaking his neck. The mere banality how easily life can cease to be is chilling to the bone.

Arjen Grolleman dreamed and believed that alternative music has a viable place in the Dutch radio landscape and lived this dream. In this he was a true idealist, acting without compromise and inspiring others.
Although lacking formal education, or maybe because of that, he was a true intellectual and homo universalis, reading poetry and philosophy and sharing it with others, always trying to show people the beauty that would come to surface after putting in some toil and sometimes tears.

An outspoken voice he had, independent. In a world that’s ruled by ratings he let himself and his colleagues be ruled by beauty without fearing the torns, no embracing the torns to show that without them the rose would be incomplete, that it’s the torns that give the rose it’s meaning. A man of extremes and now he’s gone.

The tears run rings around my eyes… It’s a bloody shame…

Filed under: Leisure by Cédric | Social tagging: Culture > Elegy > Music > Personality > Radio