Ordinary People. Performing Dutchness in a popular sing-along culture.

This presentation will be about a specific kind of Dutch popular song called levenslied (literally ‘song of life’) and the way in which levenslied songs embody sentiments of Dutchness. What sets the levenslied genre apart from other songs (children's songs, pop songs, opera) is its feature as a mainstream white, autochtonous ‘adult’ sing-along culture. The songs, generally easy in text and melody and addressing topics like the love, hardship and loneliness of ‘ordinary people’, are known by heart by millions of Dutch. Whether during a night out in the pub, in carnivalesque settings, family birthday parties or public feasts, levenslied songs may be sung out loud. Many present-day Dutch celebrities are levenslied performers, their concerts attracting tens of thousands of people time and again. Although the genre is mainstream, there is also connotation of levenslied as belonging to or originating from the (urban) lower-class, lower-educated sections of society, a dimension that gives the genre a nostalgic touch but also as a phenomenon that is looked down upon by the higher echelons of society. Significantly, levenslied became truly popular in the 1990s, the period in which the new nationalism and Dutchness as a specific sentiment gained currency.

This presentation will focus on probably André Hazes, the most ‘out-of-the-ordinarily ordinary’ levenslied performers the Netherlands have ever known, and his singing fans. Since Hazes’ untimely death in 2004, the fans commemorate their idol with concerts on the anniversaries of his birthday and day of death, and other, more modest meetings throughout the year.