Danielle de Baat

Danielle de Baat lives with her wife Angèle in Amsterdam. She works as a bus driver at the transport company Connexxion. Musically she has remained active. After her return from Berlin she played in a Dutch lesbian band “Vendetta”. After that she turned to folk music. Together with Angèle she forms the duo “Saluti e Baci”. They play music of the 4 provinces in northern Italy.

My friend Angèle accompanies me on accordion and I play “Piffero”, a forerunner of the modern oboe. In the meantime we came to know a lot of people who like to dance to this music, also because we run a well-visited website that shows video’s of festivals and performances where the music of the 4 provinces is played:
Also you can see there a video of us both: www.salutiebaci.nl

 

 

Biographical

In the summer of 1975 I was 21. I lived (and was born) in Amsterdam and drove to Femø, where I heard the Berlin lesbians telling them about the great things they did in Berlin: Lesbian Newspaper, Lesbian Action Center (LAZ) … ” I have to go there! “I thought, and left. With my guitar, that had to be. I had played from an early age on and made my own songs. M.S. temporarily put me down in the shared apartment at Cosimaplatz. Also a shared flat was something new for me. She heard me strum and asked me if I did not want to join the Flying Lesbians LP, which was just then in the making. I said yes, and did not think anything about it. I had never played in a band, never touched an electric guitar. I am also not sure if Monika ever asked the other Lesbians before …

 

What was the most important thing about Flying Lesbians?

Together with drummer Gigi I had rather the music as a starting point, the others were more politically motivated. That does not mean that I did not agree with the political motives. I was still very young, of course, had to enter the Berlin scene, and, not unimportant either – learning the language, the German and the jargon.

I was, and am still, one for practical projects, less concerned with political practices. That’s why – later – the sharp conflicts in the Berlin lesbian movement bothered me quite a lot… Since my membership in the Flying Lesbians helped me a lot with my naturalization.

 

anecdotal

We drove in the smoky rented VW bus criss-crossing the Federal Republic hundreds of kilometers, to Munich, Heidelberg, Hannover to our “Gigs”. With our Instruments and PA-System, which had to be set up and dismantled again and again.

And again and again rushing success. In retrospect, it seems to have taken longer than it was in reality, because all in all, I lived only 4 years in Berlin. I met my girlfriend and today’s wife (yes we got married …) and that was reason enough for me to return to Amsterdam.