A life-size wooden statue of blues singer Harry Muskee was unveiled on Saturday next to the Cuby museum in Grollo. Tree artist Jelmer Zwaan sawed, milled and chiseled the blues legend from a Drenthe oak. The tree fell two years ago during a heavy storm near Nijeveen. “It was delivered to me to do something beautiful with it someday,” Zwaan told RTV Drenthe earlier.
Muskee was the lead singer of the Dutch blues band Cuby & the Blizzards and later the Harry Muskee Band. He is seen as the founder of the polder blues. The commission for the wooden statue comes from Lukas Wever, a big fan of the band and a friend of Muskee for fifty years.
“I wanted to do something special on the anniversary of his death. Because I had seen how Jelmer as a tree artist can create beautiful images, I thought of a statue of Muskee. What could be more beautiful than having a Drenthe icon like Harry cut from a Drenthe oak by a tree artist from Drenthe,” said Wever.
The wooden statue is one of the many tributes to the Drenthe blues legend who died ten years ago. A bronze statue, a museum and a Harry Muskeepad can already be found in Grolloo, reports RTV Drenthe. And in his birthplace Assen a roundabout is named after him.
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