About this site… about reggae, the bass guitar … and a bit about me …
I got in touch with reggae when I was thirteen, and it stayed with me until now. In reggae music, the bass guitar lays, together with the drums, the foundation of the songs. In dub music, reggae brought back to its essentials, it’s basically bass and drum only.
The Bass Guitar
When I was 19 or so, a friend told me that “if you buy a bass, you can play with our band”. So I bought my first bass – a Tokaj Fender Precision Bass-imitation. I played in different bands when I lived in The Netherlands (see “Bands”), and although I succeed to “smuggle” some reggae or dub into their repertoire, the funny thing is that I never played bass in a reggae band. Later I bought a second hand Gibson The Ripper bass, which was love at first sight.
DJ Nesta – Reggae & Dub
When living in the Czech Republic from 1997 till 2014, my active involvement in music consisted mainly of DJ-ing, and a bit of singing.In 1998 I started DJ-ing reggae when I lived in the Czech city Brno. I was kind of a pioneer that time – at least in Brno – and many local DJ’s and sound-systems of today used to visit my pretty obscure monthly reggae parties in the cellar of a Brno pub called Mýdlo. I played more or less regularly up to 2014, when I moved to Brussels. In Brussels, I regularly played as DJ in the local community center
All about my reggae DJ activities (info, mixtapes, recordings…) you can find on the “Dub it with DJ Nesta” section of this website.
The Bass Guitar again
The few attempts to play in a band in the Czech Republic did not lead anywhere. S time ago, I dug out my first bass from being stored elsewhere. A bit later I brought my Gibson from The Czech Republic where it has stayed behind after moving to Brussels, and had it repaired. The summer before the corona-lockdown, after some 20 years of no serious playing with other musicians, I “officially” restarted as bass player at Brussels Jam – jam session.
Back in Holland
After 7 years of life in Belgium and 24 years abroad, I came back to Holland in the summer of 2021 and settled in The Hague. Time for a new start (again 🙂 ) – with reggae and bass-playing.
I haven’t done much with reggae in the Netherlands yet, but this time the bass guitar didn’t disappear under a layer of dust. Early 2022 I started to play bass with The Good View, a long-established new wave rock band. With The Good View we performed once – at Popradar in The Hague. As of February 2023, however, the band fell apart is defunct, so I am looking for something new again.
