“It was just amazing. To be in the studio, to be working on that first album, to be in that moment--and then receiving the call that there’s going to be support for it once it’s done. It was just… amazing.”

The call in question was from Kultur | LX, Luxembourg’s arts council, informing the recipient that he had won the 2023 Global Project Grant.

The support in question was a sum of €25,000.

And the recipient of the call was singer/songwriter Josh Island--real name Josh Oudendijk--who was in Portugal, recording his debut album, at the time. He was literally in the sound booth, unable to answer the phone right away.

“It’s a massive grant. I don’t think any other country in the EU has a grant that size,” says the artist, understandably still buoyant with the news.

“But they’ll be watching me,” he adds with a laugh. “I’ll need to spend it wisely.”

Hitting the European stage

The grant will go towards promoting the debut album (as yet untitled), which is due out on 15 September 2023. Included will be a tour throughout Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. “My main markets,” Oudendijk says.

But hitting such a milestone doesn’t happen overnight.

The musician, 24, began his formal training on the classical guitar as a child, but later felt that something was missing. “Some form of expression just wasn’t there,” he says, “and I noticed it was probably something to do with singing and writing.”

At the crux of it, he says, was the connection between himself and the audience. “Through pop music and this singer/songwriter style, I found my full form of expression, so to say.”

He started playing bars and open-mic nights in Luxembourg at the age of 15, finding the small size of Luxembourgish scene helpful in terms of finding opportunities. For example, he managed to perform as an opening act for the likes of James Morrison and Passenger, spots for which competition would have been fiercer in bigger markets like Germany.

Fast forward to 2022: Oudendijk has two EPs under his belt and has matured as a musician. “With this [debut] album, I think I’ve found more of my sound and what I want to say,” he tells Delano in an interview. “For me, music is all about storytelling and conveying your message.”

Two singles from the album have been released already. “Make It” builds slowly, taking a simple acoustic guitar riff and layering Island’s seeping harmonies on top--it has that sonic quality of a wave of melancholy that, as it crashes, reveals itself to actually comprise elements of hopefulness, suspension of worry, calm. In “Pennies From Heaven”, meanwhile, Island’s lyrics are couched in a folksier landscape and, despite a soaring vocal line, retains a calmness or chillness that seems native to the artist.

“I don’t really know where I’m from”

Part of Oudendijk’s life that he has chosen to subsume into his artistic persona is his pan-Europeanness: born in the UK to Dutch parents, he spent his formative preteen and teenage years in Luxembourg before moving to Maastricht to study.

“It’s definitely something I want to emphasise,” he says of his multinational background. “When I say I feel European, it’s because I don’t really know where I’m from.” Fittingly, he graduated from the European School in the grand duchy.

“Obviously I feel Dutch, because I have my Dutch nationality--but I’ve been very privileged to have such an international upbringing, and with so much interaction with different cultures I feel like… I belong in Europe.”

In illustration of this border-blurring outlook, Oudendijk was asked to write and perform a song at the 25-year celebration of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 2017. The feeling is also present in “Make It”, not only in the tune’s meandering and prodding musical lines but also in its video, in which the musician dreamily, perhaps restlessly, drives through European landscapes.

“When I’m on stage I still tend to say I’m from Luxembourg, because if I say I’m from Europe everyone is like… well, yeah, duh,” he adds, laughing.

And Luxembourg is indeed where, more definitively, Josh Island the musician was born. “I really feel more of an emotional connection [with Luxembourg] because my music began here,” he says.

“I’m a musician from Luxembourg. I think that will always be the case.”

Josh Island’s next concert in Luxembourg will take place on 11 March in Echternach.