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Splogman (Jan Turkenburg) was born in the hot summer of 1964 in a small village near Amsterdam. He grew up by the water and with a lot of music. When his father wasn't practising the trombone, there would be the sound of the radio or the record player in the house. When he was eight he started playing the recorder, and after a few years he gradually switched over to the flute. During his childhood he played in school orchestras and in church, where he composed many new songs for the youth choir. His fascination for radio grew and at 16 he built a small range FM transmitter to have his own pirate station which sometimes even was recieved outside of the village.
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In 1988 he left Haarlem, where he had lived two and a half years. Leaving two studies unfinished, he started a busking career in Antwerp, Belgium. He spent many hours at "De Muziekdoos", a music pub, meeting place for all kinds of musicians, free live music and try out stage every night. There he joined The Stepping Stone Visit, an acoustic band that mainly played calypso music in chique restaurants, but that also appeared at summer festivals as a cover band. He stopped playing the streets and when the band wasn't playing for a few days he now travelled through the Benelux armed with flute, smoking and shoe polish to play the restaurants and cafés of each town he came through.
He moved with part of the band to Champagne, a tiny village near Malmédy. The Stepping Stone Visit started to perfrom as a duo or trio more and more, occasionally working with guest musicians. Then after two years friction between the members of the group started to build up and at the end of 1990 Jan decided the wisest thing would be to return to Holland with Wilma who had moved in just a few months before. |
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They married on march 26 1991 in Amersfoort and after having lived in several places and both having had lots of different "ordinary" jobs they finally settled down in Zwolle, where Jan began a musical study at the local academy. Meanwhile he and Wilma had started performing as De Zwervende Keien (= The Drifting Boulders). They played at street festivals, old people's homes and for The Red Cross as an acoustic act with dutch folk and comical songs and they created on-demand-musicals and events. Jan completed his study by making three educational radioshows for kids at the classical music station The Concertzender. Splogman is a fully qualified "allround" music teacher now, but he prefers to work at primary schools such as De Geert Grote School. He also gives basic music lessons and other musical activities for small children at the local music school (being part of the art centre De Muzerie in Zwolle). When not teaching he collects strange sounds and music on the internet and creates his own world in music and on this website. |