Remembering Oscar Kraal

“I met Oscar about 12 years ago. It was around the time that AB Music picked up the distribution of Sabian cymbals in The Netherlands. Oscar is a Sabian endorser and he was about to perform with Anouk at Gelredome. The gig was to be filmed for a DVD release and Oscar needed some new cymbals relatively fast. Though I had never met him, I made sure Oscar got what he needed for the gig.”

“A few weeks went by and I decided to get in touch with Oscar to talk through some endorsement stuff and see if he was into doing some clinics for us. He was in, and shortly after we got together a few times for clinics at music stores in Benelux.”

“We kept in touch over email and phone for some time. What I loved about Oscar was whenever we would call, it would usually start with the sentence: “I have a quick question …”, but it would always end-up in a 1-hour phone call at least. He told such great stories, and I loved to listen to those stories, I learned a lot from them.

Flash forward to 2012. I came up with the idea of doing a small clinic tour in Benelux with Mario Goossens and Oscar Kraal sharing the stage. So, I decided it would be a fun idea to have dinner with Mario and Oscar first to share my clinic idea and talk it through. 

Not only did this turn out to be such a fun little clinic tour. We also decided to have dinner on a regular basis at our homes, just for fun. We would take turns cooking. What started as casual dinners turned it to a lasting friendship really quickly, and those dinners evolved into what we call our “drummer’s hang” with many more of our Benelux drummer friends.”

“Whenever we would meet up for a drummer’s hang, I would pick Oscar up at the train station in Antwerp to drive wherever we needed to be. I always loved our conversations in the car. They were never about drums or drumming, but always about music in general, food, drinks, family and travels. He was such a great storyteller, and he was hilarious! Many of the best moments in my life so far were with Oscar, Mario, Davy, Dino, Joris and many others, having a barbecue, sitting in the pool and just laughing our asses off until our stomachs hurt!

My heart goes out to his daughters Rosa and Joni, his partner Ilse, Harm, Severine and my friends Mario, Davy, Dino and Cees… 

Farewell Oscar, I will miss you!”

Stephke