Jan Van started as a drummer in clubs playing popular greek music (laïka) even before he was 18, a typical first step for a musician in Greece. In this way he experienced the underground and in fact the surrealistic atmosphere of the laïka greek clubs. At the age of 20, he started working as a roadie (installing drums) and it was then that he realised a drummer can be a musical director-producer and not just a session musician. So he decided to continue his education and in 1996 he went to study at the Rotterdam’s Conservatorium’s (Codarts) Jazz Department, where he stayed for seven years. Soon after his return to Athens he started wondering how to fuse jazz with laïkodimotiko (lumpen, popular music), something detectable in his recent discography.
