Songs about love, poverty and swimming in Bacardi lemon: Dutch ‘levenslied’ captures a new generation

The Netherlands’ guttersnipe answer to French chanson and German schlager is as popular as ever – but has it lost its roots as the defiant voice of the working class? Our writer sways along at the Muziekfeest van het Jaar to find out‘U doet wat, precies, meneer?’ My chic twentysomething hairdresser throws me a puzzled look: “You’re doing what, exactly, sir?” I am not behaving like an Englishman. I have just told her that I have bought tickets for the Muziekfeest van het Jaar (Music of the Year festival) in Amsterdam’s cavernous Ziggo Dome: a two-night extravaganza that is being recorded to be broadcast on New Year’s Eve as a kind of Dutch equivalent to Jools Holland’s Hootenanny, all dedicated to the brassy, sentimental, often untranslatable and still monumentally popular Dutch pop known as levenslied.“Levenslied” roughly translates as “songs about life”, and although popular throughout the land, especially in North Brabant, it is commonly associated with Amsterdam, and specifically the formerly working-class district of the Jordaan. A social and local music, levenslied concerns itself with family, friends and close associates. Stylistically, it has a connection to the 20th-century French chanson réaliste of Edith Piaf and, when in a party mood, finds common cause with German schlager. Continue reading...