A magical middle class

Several times in his life the flute was a weapon. Ronald Snijders does not mean that metaphorically. The first time he was sixteen years old when a violinist from the Surinamese youth orchestra sat taunting him about the girl he was in love with. He got so angry that he threw his flute and box at him. The weapon shattered to the ground. He had received the flute that year from his father.

That box is now weathered, the black leather cracked, the felt battered. Ronald Snijders (70) has decided to let it wear out like himself. He maintains the flute itself better, although it is not very precise. “The East German solidity ensures that nothing of the quality is simply lost.” The Uebel has been in his possession for 54 years now.

groove

In the seventies and eighties he conquered a place in the Dutch jazz scene. You didn’t hear a flute there that often, and certainly not one of East German manufacture that was played with a lot of groove by a Surinamese from Delft. He soon discovered that he could play rhythmically by blowing over the now cracked Bakelite mouthpiece. A kind of beatboxing on the flute. Sure, he can play the clear notes for Mozart or Ravel, but he prefers to use his voice in combination with the flute. He discovered this technique by accident. Around Christmas he heard his father Eddie Snijders in Suriname a second batch of Silent Night hum over the melody of the flute. With that, Ronald could finally add the harmonic expression that he was missing in the flute.

The Uebel is a middle class, says Snijders. There are better, more modern flutes, with a longer range and open keys. But as an autodidact he has grown into this flute. He couldn’t even play those open keys right away, he’s learned to play with his whole fingers, instead of his fingertips. He likes the unpolished, the imperfection that creeps into the music.

Sure, he can play the clear notes for Mozart or Ravel, but he prefers to use his voice in combination with the flute

He can make contact with the flute, as he always does in concert halls on all continents. “It’s like a magic stick to communicate with. In Mexico I played at the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán and immediately connected with school children there.”

Late jam session

The second time the whistle served as a weapon, it was for protection. In the late 1970s, he was walking through Harlem at night, returning from a late jam session to his rented room. He felt vulnerable. Everyone could see he was a stranger, he thought. He was anxious. He began to carry the flute’s case like a club, swing it fiercely. His step became self-assured automatically. There came a certain swagger in his stride. When he reached his room he had the feeling that he had conquered something and immediately wrote the song to that rhythm Lenox, a reference to Lennox Avenue on which he walked. It’s on the album A Safe Returnnow a sought-after record among funk collectors.