This 2024 photo by Bauke van der Lee shows, left to right: Syama de Jong, earliest Dutch punk and Lou’s drummer: My long obituary for her is here. Terry, bass/vocals, co-founder of the earliest all-women Dutch punk band PVC, and of Cheap ‘n’ Nasty; Herman de Tollenaere, co-founder of Cheap ‘n’ Nasty.
This is the text of my contribution, by Zoom, to the KISMIF conference in Portugal, on 9 July 2026.
Hi, I am Herman de Tollenaere, a historian from the Netherlands. Our subject is Women in Dutch punk, 1976-1982: figures, forgetfulness and anarchism.
Punk in the 1970s was a breakthrough for women in music. Including in the Netherlands. Research for this paper, which I did together with Dr Anita Raghunath, found out that at least 241 women played in punk bands in the Netherlands in 1976-1982. Many more women than we expected at the start of our research. Women were also important in early punk as fanzine makers, photographers, etc.
Writings on Dutch punk have so far neglected women. The only book on Dutch punk 1977-1982 interviewed 29 men and one woman; three percent. Why this forgetfulness, with parallels in writings on other subjects, this cryptogyny? Cryptogyny is a recent word, invented by Catalan linguists, from the Greek words for hiding and women.
We can test for the Netherlands hypotheses, proposed to explain cryptogyny in writings on United Kingdom punk. Is it because of big record labels’ signing policies? Because the hardcore tendency from the USA rose in punk? Because of the rise of right-wing governments? Because of wars? Testing these hypotheses shows differences between the UK and Dutch situations. Why? We need further research. Also: What did punk women mean for Dutch anarchism?
Let us begin with the first Dutch punk: Saskia, or Syama de Jong. Born in my city, Leiden. She left the Netherlands for three reasons. First, an art school refused to admit her, as she was from a working-class family. Second, she was mixed Eurasian, which racists did not like. Third, she was a LGBTQ person, and wanted to get away from Dutch discrimination. She would find similar discrimination in France. The French government repeatedly deported her for her so-called ‘crime’ of lesbianism.
She landed in London, as the only Dutch person in the 1975-1976 early days of punk around Vivienne Westwood’s and Malcolm McLaren’s shop. She was the housemate of Chrissie Hynde, later of the Pretenders. Syama became the drummer in the Lou’s, the first ever all-women band in any kind of rock music in France. She told me: ‘I learned drumming without a role model, I taught myself. Just hit it!’ The Dutch music press hated the Lou’s. They described them at the 1977 Mont-de-Marsan punk festival in France as ‘slum girls who should never have been on a stage.’ They claimed that drummer Syama was not a proper drummer: they wrote: ‘more like in a butcher shop, cutting meat with lots of bone’.
I was so angry about that classist sexist review that I founded a punk fanzine and a band.
Syama, as a Lou’s member, became the first Dutch punk person to get a big label record deal. The Lou’s played many concerts in Britain, Ireland, Italy, France and Belgium, with bands like the Clash, Penetration, and many more.
Syama became a housemate of Public Image Limited. She played to ten thousands of people at a London Rock Against Racism open air concert. In 1981, she returned to Leiden, founding the Miami Beach Girls.
Syama de Jong is not mentioned in any literature on early Dutch punk so far. Neither are most of the at least 241 women in first wave punk bands.
On early Dutch punk women, only a twenty page article by Pauwke Berkers was published.
There are three possible answers for this lack of women’s visibility:
Hypothesis one. Early Dutch punk was a nearly 100% male scene.
No, it was not. At least 241 Dutch women were in at least 157 bands then.
Hypothesis two says that 1976-1982 punk fanzines hardly paid attention to all-women or mixed-gender bands. And later literature based itself on that. No, that hypothesis is also wrong. Fanzines then did pay attention hundreds of times to bands which included women.
Hypothesis three. There were far more women in early Dutch punk than later literature says. The problem is not early fanzines, but later literature. Correct.
Kirstie Lohman and Anita Raghunath, have two hypotheses on women in UK punk: one, that the rise of the ‘hardcore’ (in the post-1980s sense) tendency within punk diminished the role of women. That is possible. Eg, Siouxsie Sioux says so. But we could not test that, as there was yet no ‘hardcore’ punk in the Netherlands in our 1977-1982 timeframe. They have also a hypothesis about mainstream record companies. It is correct for the UK, as British all-male bands got recording contracts easier than bands including women. It does not fit for the Netherlands. Of the hundreds of Dutch first-wave punk bands, only four made a big label LP. The record companies dumped 3 of these after the first album; the fourth band was dumped after the second album.
So, proportionally there was more DIY in Dutch punk than in the UK. How did our band Cheap ‘n’ Nasty get money for recording four songs on our Covergirl EP?
A motorist had broken the leg of our bassist and female vocals Terry. He had to pay Terry damages. We used that money to rent a studio for one day.
Then Terry brought the master tape to a pressing plant in Belgium. She smuggled our 1000 records back to the Netherlands.
Then, Terry and her mother put the records and the lyrics booklets inside the record sleeves, at the dinner table. Our EP was the only 1977-1982 Dutch punk record where a woman, Terry, had written all tunes and all lyrics.
Helen Reddington writes that two moments in political history marked a decline in UK punk, and with it, a decline in the presence of women. First, the coming of the Conservative Thatcher administration in 1979.
Second, the Malvinas/Falklands war of 1982. These reinforced conservatism and militarism, harming punk in general and punk women in particular.
How were politics in the Netherlands? Changing a Dutch ‘center-left’ government to a right-wing government happened two years before Britain, in 1977, when Dutch punk was still in its infancy. The Dutch goverment in 1977-1982 waged no wars similar to the British government’s.
There was a mass anti-nuclear weapons movement, proportionally even bigger than in Britain. Punks, including punk women, participated. From 1981 on, governmental austerity on youth clubs did cause problems for punk bands wanting to play.
One can conclude that the factors named by Reddington for Britain did not work similarly in the Dutch situation.
Before punk started, the role of women was often limited to vocals: background vocals, sometimes lead vocals. Of the women in early Dutch punk, 60% were instrumentalists. They started without female role models. Gaye Advert in the UK, my bandmate Terry, earlier founder of the first Dutch all-girl punk band PVC, and Tollim Toto of the Lou’s in France were pioneer bass players.
They all had no female role models.
The instruments played most by Dutch punk women were guitar, bass and drums. Also less usual instruments: keyboard, saxophone (like ex-Lou’s guitarist Raphaelle who became our Cheap ‘n’ Nasty saxophonist) or accordeon.
Where were the Dutch punk women from? 75% were from the 3 western provinces, North Holland, South Holland and Utrecht; provinces where less than half of Dutch people lived.
Many Dutch punks, including women, became anarchists. Before 1977, women were underrepresented in Dutch anarchism, compared to countries like Spain and the USA. There was then no Dutch movement like Mujeres Libres in Spain. The first female government minister in Spain was the anarchist Federica Montseny in 1936. There was no Dutch Federica Montseny, Emma Goldman or Lucy Parsons.
There had been nationally known Dutch anarchopacifist Clara Wichmann. But she died young in 1921.
In February 1941, an anarchist woman, together with a communist party colleague, organised a strike at a big printing works in Leiden against the German nazi occupiers’ persecution of Jews. But that is not widely known; cryptogyny?
The rise of punk in the 1970s brought some gender balance to the Dutch anarchist movement. Like in Alkmaar city, punks, mainly teenage girls, founded KAAS, Collective of Alkmaar Anarchist Socialists. KAAS gave rise to the important DIY venue Parkhof, the fanzine Blad and all-women band Wanda’s.
The Wanda’s are together again now. There are hundreds of punk bands now in the Netherlands. Many young people, many young women. So, what started in the 1970s still continues today. In 1980, our band played at a big rally against government plans to ban abortion. Now, there is all-women band Vulva.
They made a song mocking anti-abortionists. A right-wing MP asked the government to ban Vulva.
More research is needed. 1970s punk women are now past middle age.
Some have died. Including the first Dutch punk, Syama de Jong, in 2025.
In 2024, there was a jampacked meeting of young people, on the recent revival of punk. The panel included the singer of Vulva. There came enormous applause after I spoke about Syama de Jong.
To conclude: thank you for listening! I hope you have many questions!
Recent Comments