Maggie Vandenabeele

Maggie Vandenabeele was born on 24 March 1949 in Schaerbeek, Brussels. She grew up with her brother Réginald, two years her senior, and their mother Helene “Lena” Belli, who was of Italian origin. Her Belgian father, Georges Vandenabeele, left the family when his daughter was about two years old. In 1954, Lena Belli and her two children moved to Dudelange, where her family ran the café Op der Keeler Strooss, 141. This establishment had belonged to Maggie Vandenabeele’s Italian grandparents before being passed on to her aunt Landa and later to her mother Lena.  

Some of Maggie Vandenabeele’s earliest memories are linked to music: as a young child, she remembers spending hours in front of the radio, listening to Fred Astaire. The café where she lived regularly hosted dances where the local Italian community got together and socialised. Maggie Vandenabeele’s uncles were fond of singing and playing the trumpet at those occasions. 

Lena Belli herself loved classical music and encouraged her daughter to take lessons at the Ecole municipale de musique de Dudelange. Maggie Vandenabeele first took solfège classes with Pierre Cao from 1958 to 1961, then piano lessons at the same school. Later, she enrolled for classes at the Conservatoire de Musique de la ville de Luxembourg.  

During her childhood and early teenage years, her mother ran various cafés in Dudelange: they lived at the café Beim Lena and café Mayfair, which closed in the 1990s.

Maggie Vandenabeele went to the Maria Hilf vocational and home economics school in Esch-sur-Alzette and then to the Athénée royal d’Arlon. She liked singing Beatles songs with her friends during breaks and on the train to and from Luxembourg. One of these impromptu performances led to Maggie Vandenabeele being recruited as the lead singer of the Dudelange-based beat band The Ghosts. In 1966, after The Ghosts split up, she joined the band The Dukes – a short-lived band that broke up in 1968. However, it was precisely this band that brought us to Maggie Vandenabeele: in those days, women were virtually non-existent on the Luxembourg rock and pop scene. In “Lëtzebuerg an den 60er Joeren”, a book published by Bibi Krings (2007), a photo of The Dukes caught our eye: who was this young woman with big glasses, dressed in black, taking her place in front of four young men? Luke Haas’s “Lëtzebuerger Rock Lexikon” (1988) gave us our first clue, and we found out not only about Maggie Vandenabeele’s life as musician, but also as a traveller, photographer, painter and coach. 

After dropping out of school, Maggie Vandenabeele started working in her mother’s café. This gave her a modest income and some independence. Her first visit to Paris in 1966 was an eye-opening experience: she and a small group of friends wanted to see the Rolling Stones perform in Auvers-sur-Oise. Although the concert was cancelled at short notice due to extreme weather conditions, this first outing allowed the teenager to see that there was a world outside of Luxembourg, a country she perceived as too quiet and traditional. As a result, Maggie Vandenabeele moved to Paris for a few months. There she took up photography, and from then on, the camera was her constant companion on her travels.   

From 1969 Maggie Vandenabeele was an avid traveller, often spending several months in one place. She spent half a year in London, then went on to Barmouth in Wales, Scotland, France and Belgium in 1970. In 1971 she visited the Scandinavian countries. During all this time she took on odd jobs in the places she visited, working as an au pair here, in retail there, sometimes as a translator or as a secretary. Around 1975 she accompanied her mother on a visit to her hometown in Sardinia before travelling further east on her own. She spent some time picking oranges in Greece, then hitchhiked through Turkey to Jordan, Syria and Israel. In Israel she lived and worked in the kibbutz Heaven near Beer-Sheva.  

In 1978 she settled in Paris for almost two years and enrolled in a teaching programme called GAME (Groupe pour l’amélioration des méthodes d’enseignement). She taught piano and solfège classes, but also attended various music courses herself, such as guitar and opera singing as well as drama classes at Le Lucernaire. Occasionally, she played in the underground to earn some money. In 1983, she gave birth to her son Sean. They moved to Nice where her second son, Lee, was born in 1989. 

During her time in Nice, Maggie joined the city’s Conservatoire to work on her jazz skills. She played in several jazz bands, such as the band Facette, which performed in bars and restaurants. She also formed a private singing group with other mothers called Les mamans chanteuses. During the 1990s, as well as giving private music lessons and workshops for children, she continues working on her own music. In 1998 she took part in a musical comedy in Saint-Roman-de-Bellet. In addition to her musical activities, Maggie Vandenabeele became interested in other forms of artistic expression: she wrote a children’s story called Sous le préau. In 2001, she was commissioned to illustrate a book called La forêt mystérieuse. However, as a result of the author Bettina Rometti’s sudden death, the book was never published. During those years, Maggie Vandenabeele also took painting classes. In 2003, an exhibition of her work is held at Café Arabo in Nice. She continues taking drama classes, among others with Sébastien Morena at Théâtre L’Alphabet and with Sébastien El Fassi at Espace Magnan. Espace Magnan became an important place for Maggie Vandenabeele in Nice: this association carries out socio-cultural activities in a wide range of artistic, cultural, sporting, educational and social fields. The aim of Espace Magnan is to give everyone access to education and culture, thereby promoting personal development, self-realisation and autonomy, and to encourage active and responsible citizenship in a mutually supportive community. Maggie Vandenabeele worked as a singing and drama coach at Espace Magnan, Salle de la Rampe Rouge. 

Today, Maggie Vandenabeele continues to play music, improvising on the piano by herself and together with Christophe Antipas, drummer of the group Facette. The duo regularly performs at music afternoons at the Château de la Tour des Baumettes. Throughout her life, Maggie Vandenabeele has been interested in spirituality. She has taken part in numerous workshops on self-discovery. She has never felt the need to own material possessions, preferring to live freely and constantly redefine her interests and modes of expression.