Dubai, 1972. The UAE was just one year old and Dubai was entirely unrecognisable from the modern metropolis it is today; barren, sparsely populated and largely undeveloped. Even Sheikh Zayed Road and Sheikh Rashid Tower would not be complete until the end of the decade.
This was the Dubai that Ylona van der Koijk, a bassist from Holland, chose to move to with her band – over Vietnam and Ethiopia, the two other options presented by their agent. It was an easy decision, she says, considering Vietnam and Ethiopia “had wars” going on.
“We didn’t expect anything because no one we knew had ever been there or heard of it. However, before we went to Dubai we played in Madrid, where we stumbled upon a flight crew that told us it would be very hot. We couldn’t imagine how hot.”
It was not the easiest of journeys for van der Koijk and her six-piece band – they stopped in Rome, Athens and Beirut – where, she reflects, Israeli fighter jets swooped overhead and “caused a lot of screaming”.
As surreal as this experience was, she says landing in Dubai was like arriving on “a different planet”. While Dubai is today a driver’s city, van der Koijk says she usually travelled by foot, “because nothing was very far”.
Though the dreams of international peace and love that dominated the 1960s had long since faded, Dubai’s dreams were just beginning, and at the Ambassador, the emirate’s first hotel, business was booming.
This was the home of one of Dubai’s first-ever girl groups, albeit with two male members – the Moan Set. The band had formed “somewhere in Germany” and cut its teeth performing at military bases across Europe. Between these stints, they would play at German nightclubs.
As well as van der Koijk, who also played flute and sang, the band consisted of a Dutch vocalist, guitarist and mellotron player, his Yugoslavian wife, who played percussion and sang backing vocals, a German drummer, a Polish lead singer and a Northern Irish organist.
Visitors to the hotel could expect to hear the band tearing through James Brown, British pop hits and country music.
The Moan Set had become accustomed to travelling with instruments. It was fortunate that they took more than enough spare strings and other accessories to keep them going during their stint in Dubai, as they never found any instrument shops.
Outside the hotel, the creekside air was sticky, weaving a mosaic of sounds: dhows docking, traders shouting and seagulls cawing. Occasionally, in more tranquil moments, friends walked hand-in-hand and cows would circulate the hotel’s exterior.
Inside, the audience was mainly British, although international flight crews showed up, as well as some Arabs, says van der Koijk.
She says the band were unaccustomed with Arab culture, though they made several Arab friends. “When Christmas came, they made it a point to give each of us a watch – some of them rather fancy. That was a bit uncomfortable for us, not being used to so much generosity.
“We also had to learn, when we visited a friend at his home, not to admire anything – because it was instantly given to us as a present. Not accepting it was an insult, so for the remaining time we kept our mouths shut when we noticed something nice.”
The Ambassador was not the only hotel with a band. “On Deira-side there was a big hotel and they also had bands playing in the restaurant. Good English bands, I recall. At another place, there was an all-girl Korean band playing. And then there was the Bustan on the way to the airport and a country club somewhere in the desert.” However, the music scene was perhaps the least of van der Koijk’s excitement – she was much more enthralled by the rest of her UAE experience. From the boat and beach parties to the helicopter rides, it was all new and thrilling.
They would spend most of their leisure time with Eric Tulloch, who brought fresh water to Dubai at the request of the late Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. He would drive them to the desert in his Land Cruiser and let them use his pool.
Once, while swimming in the Gulf, they were frightened by a shiver of sharks – which turned out to a pod of dolphins.
The band stayed five months and while they broke up later, van der Koijk stayed involved in music. She looks back on Dubai as an incredible experience – “the most memorable five months of my life”.
“Of all the exciting things we did, flying over the Gulf, swimming in it, racing through the desert on an Arabic beauty of a horse, playing at a wedding for only the women, the most memorable was my last day.
“I went alone deep into the desert and simply sat there taking in a silence I had never experienced before.”
She compares this to watching a Jumeirah Beach sunrise with the band’s organist. “Before us was the endless Gulf and behind us, the endless desert. We didn’t speak for a long time.”
halbustani@thenational.ae