Amsterdam Summer Festival’s Foodscape

A visit to Amsterdam's "Roots Festival, 2018": storytelling and images of a multicultural foodscape, and of a sizzling melting pot of postcolonial identities

[Roots Festival: https://www.amsterdamroots.nl/ ]

[Source: https://www.amsterdamroots.nl/gallery/festival-2018/]

 Departure and Arrival

 [All photos from here on are by the author]

It was a course assignment on a Sunday and I had mix feelings about it. While part of me wanted to stay in bed, the other part was anxious to meet my colleagues outside the school setting. Of course, there was also the curiosity to go to a multicultural event in a world-city like Amsterdam. After all, it was a field trip to Amsterdam Roots Festival and part of a summer school on ethnography and storytelling at VU (Vrije Universeit Amsterdam).

The festival is an annual traditional local event about diversity and grassroots with several stalls, presentations, and workshops of multiple forms of artistic expression and craftwork, from music, dance, circus, and storytelling to food. I presumed the festival’s bazaar would be particularly colourful and exciting, giving me the chance to observe, interact, and take photos from people selling handcrafts and ethnic food, while also tasting it, in a multidimensional and multicultural foodscape – which is basically the landscape of the political, economic, historical, social, and cultural context in which practices and values related to food and eating are somehow established and occur in a given space and time [1].

Anyway, it was a beautiful sunny day perfect to go to a park and enjoy it with friends, to listen to different music styles and to taste foods from different cuisines – not to mention, a great opportunity to put into practice what we had been learning in our anthropology course. All that in an event with a distinctive neighbourhood-like flair, possible only in cities like Amsterdam, yet away from the hordes of tourists and foreign kids “smoking their brains off” in the coffee shops in the central part of the city – I am not being judgemental, do not take me wrong, I usually pay a visit to De Tweede Kamer for old times’ sake whenever I am in Amsterdam.

That day, our starting point was Amstelstation, by “the piano” as Younes, our course co-ordinator, had instructed us, as simple as that.

Younes alone is a unique character. He is a well-known Iranian anthropologist, a bit mysterious given is life history, obviously, who did war zone ethnography, more precisely among the Daesh in Syria, using storytelling and visual elements to counterbalance the hardness of traditional academic writing.

There stood the piano, honourably right in the middle of a major train and tube station, taken by a young fellow.

Despite some temptation, I did not dare to touch it. Despite coming from a musical family, which makes music very central to my existence, I play no instruments. I sat at it just to register the beginning of our mission-adventure. On the other hand, Vittoria, a multicultural and talented Aussie, was the one who honoured us with a few beautiful tunes. That done, are we all right? Are we all here? So, off we go! With the help of Google Maps, we set off on our exploration.

On the way, my pace had eventually accelerated by the excitement of the journey I had just embarked on – what the heck, I cannot deny my “Brazilianess”, we are full of emotion, yes, sometimes too much. Some minutes later, we came by a lost poster of the festival stuck on a wall near Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, our final destination. We were near...

I felt compelled to register it, perhaps in the hope of marking my “ethnographic footsteps”. What? Oh, yes, you may say that it is practically impossible to get lost with Google Maps, but I had managed it the day before – after one of those visits to De Tweede Kamer, of course.

After confirming that we were in the right direction, we made more headway for a few blocks and “voilà”! There we were: the Oosterpark, entering the festival’s grounds in a single file as if we were true explorers delving into an unknown Jules-Verne-like adventure to the centre of the Earth.

As we did it, we saw the first lines of stalls being set to sell food and handcraft. But..., yes, I know..., sure it seemed rather empty and too quiet early in the morning, nonetheless, the first-hours fresh air cutting through the park’s trees’ shades made me relax...

 Still, the presence of locals taking their Sunday stroll with their dogs announced and reinforced the park’s neighbourhood atmosphere and the Festival’s grassroot character, which I suspected could collaborate to some authenticity of the experience, despite all globalization involved in it.

Such peacefulness was also a perfect setting for Henry to explore his ethnographer vein as he waked by the stalls and calmly talked to the people setting the stands. Inspired by him, I turned to my ethnographic mission, trying to mimic his style when interacting with my “observees” [2] to obtain the so-often-sought empirical material as spontaneous as possible and essential to any ethnographer. I started to toil, working on spoken and visual gems (such as a Dutch-Creole "wurst") in search for data, taking my notes and photos and continuously seeking spontaneous conversations.

As an experienced chef, seasoned traveller and a not-so rookie researcher, I felt the bazaar could give me plenty of material about Amsterdam's foodscapes. Of course, I kept in mind that my research's "patrons" (the stalls' people) had to improvise to cater for a large avid crowd and, so, my expectations about the quality or authenticity of their cuisines should be duly adjusted. Sure, this did not impair the cultural diversity of the material available. On the contrary, adjustments may result from negotiations among various multicultural identities in postcolonial settings, without compromising the richness of their cultural roots [3].

Indeed, at a Surinamese food stall, we tasted a delicious and refreshing non-alcoholic ginger beer. As the ginger touched my palate, a sparkling-like sensation reached every corner of my mouth, reminding me of the traditional Chinese hot-and-cold duality and of how West and East have met since the Columbian Exchange. Brave new world?

Dutch, Creole, Chinese, Surinamese, such an array of postcolonial flavours, aromas, colours and diverse impressions... Venezuelan flavours...

Türkiye's (instead of Turkey to respect a legitimate wish) ever-present falafel and kebabs...

Indian, Indonesian (it seems Dutch buccaneers and traders have been everywhere indeed)...

The ever-delicious and equally always-present Japanese cuisine – which, depending on your perspective, unfortunately, due to the sushi craze and its attached fishing industry, may have been helping to decimate the tuna population from the seas [4]...

Even local creative interpretations of Southern US cuisine (Florida menu?) confirming how a culinary identity can be adapted when inserted in a new foodscape......

And surprisingly, there were even some stalls offering Dutch food and delicacies, reminding that local traditions may live together with new influences...

Last, given the event's general tone, neither should I forget to mention Amnesty International’s smiling team. It becomes difficult these days to separate diversity in Europe from issues related to human rights, refugees, and the degree and quality of human beings’ capacity to live together in truly diverse societies. So, they were there, collecting data and spreading their always important message.

Food and eating are central to our survival [5], but they also shape a socially and historically constructed cultural phenomenon [6]. Therefore, food, eating and the foodscape notion share a multidisciplinary nature [7 and 8]. Madame Coco, born in the Netherlands from Moroccan parents and speaking five languages; Jair, a Dutch born from Ghana parents, named after a Brazilian footballer, and starting his online company of organic skincare products…;

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... the Senegalese looking after the stall selling colourful straw bags…;

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... the Ecuadorian lady selling the always colourful Andean woollen work; and Mexico’s stand displaying the eternal Frida Kahlo may all help see the greater and complex context of Amsterdam’s multidisciplinary foodscapes.

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Yet, as I progressed along the lines of stalls, so varied colours, nice food smells and sounds had a “déjà vu” effect on me. So many impressions kept pressing me back to my own life story – as to a Mapusa’s market, in Goa, in India, in the distant year of 1990, when an immense array of impressions from strong colours, people’s hubbub, different sounds and music, and multiple scents from foods and spices got me literally buzzed.

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Then and at the Oosterpark, the cooking of so diverse cuisines, spices and the smoke from charcoaled chicken; the voices in so many different languages from the increasing number of visitors; and the mixed sounds from the first accords of the bands on the stages in the park’s central lawn... It all dazzled me and made it difficult to see how to carry on with my ethnographic mission. I did not know what to do, how to continue…

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Impressions, too many impressions, which, all of a sudden, kept transporting me not only to India, but to Serrita, in the heart of Brazil’s Northeast, in 1981, to another festival, that time a religious one for local cowboys, but also with the same array of multiple impressions from colours, sounds, smells and tastes.

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Then, as many times before, I wondered whether ethnography can teach us more about the other or about ourselves. Indeed, by the time I reached the last stall, my head was in total confusion, between the present and past experience.

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