Bojoura - 2001 - Everybody's Day @320

 

Bojoura

Bojoura, the stage name of Rajna Gerardina Bojoura Cleuver-van Melzen , ( The Hague , April 15, 1947 ) is a folk and pop singer who achieved her greatest successes in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Biography

Bojoura's mother is the Bulgarian soprano Dani Zonewa . The name Bojoura comes from the Bulgarian word for peony : божур. Because the name does not occur in the Netherlands, her father had to go to the Bulgarian consulate in Brussels to prove that it is an existing name. Zonewa encouraged her to take music lessons at the Royal Conservatory (The Hague) . She also took lessons at the Kleinkunstacademie (Amsterdam) and the Academy for Performing Arts (The Hague), founded by Zonewa . Her father was Dutch.

She started her career as a singer of songs written by George Kooymans (her discoverer) of The Golden Earrings . He had received singing lessons from Bojoura's mother. She had the appearance of a hippie at that time. Her performance in Voor de fist weg , presented by Willem Duys, was not a success because, unlike her studio performances with live music, she had to sing with an audio band. She married Hans Cleuver , drummer with Focus at the time , and stopped singing for a while. Under the guidance of Thijs van Leer and Ruud Jacobs, she tried to pick up the thread again (after being active in interior design for a while). She made a number of singles and LPs and had a hit with The Letter . She also presented the AVRO TV program 'Vjoew' in 1967-1968, which was aimed at young people, in which she received guests such as The Supremes , Truman Capote , Sandie Shaw and Julie Driscoll . In the summer of 1968 she was invited to represent the Netherlands at the “Festival Orphée d'Or” in Burgas, Bulgaria. In 1969, her performance of 'Frank Mills' from the musical 'Hair' reached 8th place in the Veronica Top 40.

When The Beatles started the Apple label, there was contact with Paul McCartney about a possible recording contract. It later emerged that he had chosen to work with Mary Hopkin . Other influential people in her career included Freddy Haayen and Willem van Kooten , who both promoted and limited her: she had to remain a bit mysterious. In 1969 she was named the best singer in the Netherlands in the Muziek Expres , but she felt that she did not really belong anywhere and the other pop music felt the same way, because the list of female artists was not that long at the time. She was called 'The Dutch Marianne Faithfull – Marianne Trouwvol' in the magazine Hitweek . 

After her singing career, her main concern was the family. When the children (2 daughters and a son) had grown up, she completed her high school education in 1991 and went to college; she has completed several university studies in English (1999) and Russian, among others. After obtaining these masters, she teaches in secondary education.

Tracks;

01 Bojoura - Everybody's Day.mp3

02 Bojoura - Faceless Sorrow.mp3

03 Bojoura - Dream Man.mp3

04 Bojoura - Frank Mills.mp3

05 Bojoura - Looking For The Land (Part 1).mp3

06 Bojoura - Circus Will Be In Town In Time.mp3

07 Bojoura - Treat Me.mp3

08 Bojoura - If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.mp3

09 Bojoura - In The Corner Of My Life.mp3

10 Bojoura - Holiday.mp3

11 Bojoura - Watch What You Try To Do.mp3

12 Bojoura - I Can't Stop Rambling.mp3

13 Bojoura - Mr. Magic.mp3

14 Bojoura - That's How Strong My Love Is.mp3

15 Bojoura - Hampstead Incident.mp3

16 Bojoura - For Baby.mp3

17 Bojoura - Where Are You.mp3

18 Bojoura - Looking For The Land (Part 2).mp3

With covers.

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