Who’s Roel?

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My name is Roelant Hollander. I was born in The Netherlands, do live in the Netherlands since 2020 again, but have resided 20 years (2000-2020) in Varna, Bulgaria, a country that became my “secondary motherland”.

I was a performing artist, saxophonist (until 2017) but have “fiddled around” a little with piano, guitar, drums, flute, clarinet, EWI, percussion and violin as well in the past. I am a (mostly self-taught) composer/producer, sound engineer and freelance designer and hobby-blogger (Roel’s World). If you like to know more about my music, then do visit: djazz.org, jazzprofilactika.com.

I’m not a scientist or “expert” in any field, as I clearly stated in the disclaimer of my blog. I studied Jazz saxophone at the Constantijn Huygens Conservatory (nowadays ArtEZ) between 1998 and 2000 (did not finish due to physical health issues), nor did i finish any other “higher education” or academic study. I guess you could label me a “self-made-man“.

I love musicvisual arts (photography – something I like to explore and develop in), design, drawing/painting), culturehistoryphilosophy and science … more then enough things to blog about. 

Roel

[ Personal Website ]

ABOUT MY NAME ROELANT HOLLANDER

Roelant [roo-lahnt] is the Dutch version of the French name Roland (pronounced in English as: roh-luh nd / rəʊlənd), from the Old High German Hrodland (a variation on Hrodnand) is generally interpreted as hrod = “fame” or “honor”  and land or nand = “daring”.

In Cyrillic my name is as written and pronounced as: Рулант

A “Hollander” is someone from the province of North or South Holland in The Netherlands. The name “Holland” first appeared in sources for the region around Haarlem (in North Holland), and by 1064 was being used as the name of the entire county (The Netherlands). Holland is derived from the Old Dutch word “holtlant” meaning: “wood-land“. This spelling variation remained in use until around the 14th century, at which time the name stabilized as Holland (alternative spellings at the time were Hollant and Hollandt).