Together with fellow Anglophone Andrew Colby (British), Jenkins launched Music Brussels to encourage, support and promote rock and pop music in Belgium, which she thinks is highly underrated outside of its borders. Jenkins comes from Seattle in the northwest of the US, the country’s Mecca of alternative rock.

“I see what is happening here,” she tells me. “It’s just like what was happening in Seattle. It’s a high concentration of talent in one area. But here, it’s influenced from everywhere and by multiple languages. And their English is good enough to go to an international level.”

She should know. After completing a degree in audio, video and music business in Seattle, she worked as a studio sound engineer and backstage lighting technician before making music videos and booking for clubs. She came to Europe as a promoter for record companies in Berlin before finally setting in Brussels. Doing some rock journalism here, she was often called upon by FM Brussels for the Anglophone opinion, particularly because she speaks Dutch.

Jenkins found it continually frustrating that there was no one online source of relevant information on Belgian bands. Music Brussels will provide an online database of bands – not just from Brussels, as the name suggests, but from across the country. “We thought, why don’t we take out the boundary between Flemish and francophone and just use English as a bridge language?” she explains. “We’ve been supported enormously by both sides.”

She and Colby will also promote concerts and hope to eventually arrange group tours. “I’d like to see more tours of francophone, Flemish and even Belgian-based Anglophone groups together. That’s the goal we’re working towards. If they work together as a cohesive force, they can really get somewhere.”

The opening party is proof of pure Brussels-based diversity: first up is My TV is Dead, an electro poprock duo; then Garner, a trio that Jenkins describes as “intellectual electronica”; followed by the dIPLOMAT, a grindy, bass-driven alt rock trio (pictured) and The Vogues, a fivesome that gorgeously mixes 1960s garage and glam.

Music Brussels has already put together its first compilation CD, available at the party. The Belgian music explosion, Jenkins says, is “because of people who put their hearts and souls into it, like [independent promoter] Stage Mania and Kinky Star Music Centre [see story, page 8]. It’s how the music industry should be. It’s art. Music doesn’t have borders, and that’s the end of the story.”

27 February
from 19.00
Churchill's English Pub
Schildknaapsstraat 29
Brussels
www.musicbrussels.com