A Kross Izaline Calister

Izaline Calister is a singer, composer and bandleader. She was born on Curaçao and moved to Groningen at eighteen, where she first studied business administration at the university and then jazz and pop at the Prince Claus Conservatoire, graduating in 1998.

Her music blends Curaçao rhythms such as tambú with jazz, and she nearly always sings in Papiamentu. Her debut Soño di un muhé (2000) went to number 1 on Curaçao. With Speransa she won an Edison in the world music category in 2009. She has played North Sea Jazz, Cape Town Jazz and the Cervantino festival in Mexico, and worked with the Metropole Orkest and Toots Thielemans.

In recent years she has also been telling the history of the island. In Tula Leeft! she honours Tula, the leader of the largest slave revolt on Curaçao in 1795, with music, stories and archive footage. In Tula en Juliet she links his story to that of her great-great-grandmother, who was born into slavery. In 2021 she opened the Slavery exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, co-curated by Valika Smeulders, also a guest on A Kross ….

On King's Day 2018 she was made a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, for her music and her role as an ambassador of Papiamentu. Tania Kross and Izaline Calister already shared the bill in 2007 at Tribute to Chin in Vredenburg, Utrecht, a tribute to the work of Chin Behilia.