Celebrating the Flemish Day in Brussels [July 11th, 2011]

Belgium is a pretty complicated country... Our National Holiday is on July 21st (which does not celebrate Independance Day which was October 4th, 1830 from The Netherlands - but it recognizes the installment of Leopold I as the first King on July 21st, 1831), but every region has it's own Celebration Day. For the Flemish Region, that's July 11th - and traditionally the day concludes with a big concet at the Brussels Grand Market place. Oh, wait, Brussels really isn't part of the Flemish Region, right ? This gets complicated... Perhaps you should watch Belgium for dummies...

So, back to the concert now... For a reason I can't explain, I got invitations to attend the official celebration at the Brussels Townhall - with an excellent view on the stage. The pictures below were taken from the Balcony of the townhall that evening... pretty nice view I would say !

Click pictures to enlarge.

This year's partial list of artists... Jean Blaute (who directed the show), Philip Catherine, Roland, Lady Linn, Paul Michiels, Pieter Embrechts, Frank Vander linden, ... The big missing guest ? Johan Verminnen. Three covers of him were part of the setlist... so they might as well have invited him, it surely would have sounded better !