music of the Netherlands

The tradition & historical record

The Netherlands has multiple musical traditions. Contemporary Dutch popular music is heavily influenced by music styles that emerged in the 1950s, in the United Kingdom and United States. The style is sung in both Dutch and English. Some of the latter exponents, such as Golden Earring and Shocking Blue, have attained worldwide fame. Sometimes partly based and raised upon the tradition of Indorock, new acts with a mixture of Mainstream pop music, Dance, Jazz, Funk and Soul emerged in the mid-1980s. Many of them were and still are performing in and/or outside The Netherlands, and some of them gained (international) recognition, which would sometimes also result in a collaboration with major players from the United States or United Kingdom. An early example of these is Massada, a band with strong Moluccan roots, in the tradition of Santana. Some of the most successful artists among them were Mai Tai, Lois Lane, working with Prince, Julya Lo'ko, and saxophone player Candy Dulfer, also working with Prince, Dave Stewart and Pink Floyd. The mid-1990s saw the rise of Total Touch, with singer Trijntje Oosterhuis. Another popular genre of Dutch music is known as "Levenslied", meaning "Song of/about life". These songs have catchy, simple rhythms and melodies, and are always built up on choruses and verses. Themes are often sentimental and include love, death and loneliness. ¹

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (May 1562 – October 16, 1621) was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. Sweelinck was a master improviser, and acquired the informal title of the "Orpheus of Amsterdam". Over 70 keyboard works of his have survived, and many of them may be similar to the improvisations that residents of Amsterdam around 1600 were likely to have heard. Even his vocal music, which is more conservative than his keyboard writing, shows a striking rhythmic complexity and an unusual richness of contrapuntal devices. His influence was international. Some of his music appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which otherwise mainly contains the work of English composers. Sweelinck wrote variations on John Dowland's internationally famous Lachrimae Pavane, and John Bull, the English keyboard composer, wrote a set of variations on a theme of Sweelinck, indicating the close connection between the different schools of composition across the North Sea. Jacob van Eyck (ca. 1590–1657) was a blind recorder and organ virtuoso, who composed a unique collection of flute music. Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692–1766) was an accomplished baroque composer, whose work Concerti Armonici erroneously was attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Igor Stravinsky used Unico's music for Pulcinella. Alphons Diepenbrock (September 2, 1862 – April 5, 1921) created a musical idiom which, in a highly personal manner, combined 16th-century polyphony with Wagnerian chromaticism, to which in later years was added the impressionistic refinement that he encountered in Debussy's music. Willem Pijper (1894–1947) is generally considered one of the most important figures in modern Dutch music. ¹

Dutch folk music, is characterized by simple straightforward bass motives heavily supplemented with fast, often happy, melody. (Click here for an example.) Uncommon among other European folk, in Dutch music the bass line, not the melody, is the musical line that is danced to. This means that though the music itself may sound fast, the dances are usually quite moderate to slow in tempo. The dances themselves are mainly group dances rather than individual or dual dances. Clogs are often worn during dances; however, Dutch clog dancing is very different from its more modern counterpart. It is virtually impossible to perform highly active dances with Dutch clogs (which are entirely made from wood, not just the sole) and hence the clogs function as additional percussion, by stamping rhythmically. ¹

In the early 19th century, rural Dutch folk began moving to cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, bringing with them folk traditions. Many of their songs and dances, however, began to dwindle in popularity. In the early part of the 20th century, however, a number of urban intellectuals travelled to the countrysides to record with local musicians, a process paralleled in other European countries, such as Spain. In the 1970s, the Netherlands underwent a roots revival, led by artists like Gerard van Maasakkers, Jos Koning, Dommelvolk and RK Veulpoepers BV, Fungus and Wolverlei. ¹

The North Sea Jazz Festival attracts artists from international acclaim. Misha Mengelberg (June 5, 1935 - March 3, 2017) was a jazz pianist and composer. He was the pianist on Eric Dolphy's last album, Last Date (1964). Also featuring on that record was the drummer Han Bennink, and together with Piet Noordijk they formed a quartet which had a number of different bassists. They played at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. In 1967 he co-founded the Instant Composers Pool, an organisation which promoted avant garde Dutch jazz performances and recordings, with Han Bennink and Willem Breuker. Mengelberg played with a large variety of musicians. He often performed in a duo with compatriot Bennink, and with other musicians including Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton. Han Bennink (born April 17, 1942) is a jazz drummer, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist. Through the 1960s he drummed with a number of American musicians visiting the Netherlands, including Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Eric Dolphy. He subsequently became a central figure in the emerging European free improvisation (or free jazz) scene. From the late 1960s he played in a trio with saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and Belgian pianist Fred Van Hove, which became a duo after Van Hove's departure in 1976. Through much of the 1990s he played in Clusone 3 (also known as the Clusone Trio), a trio with saxophonist and clarinetist Michael Moore and cellist Ernst Reijseger. ¹

Many Dutch artists have become popular by singing songs in their own language. It started with Peter Koelewijn in the late 1950s, the first to sing Rock and Roll in Dutch. In the 1960s it was mainly Boudewijn de Groot - to this day extremely popular. In the 1970s there were many performers, of which Rob de Nijs stood out. The 1980s were for André Hazes and less Koos Alberts. The 1990s were dominated by Marco Borsato. Other well-known names throughout the years were Jan Smit, Frans Bauer, Gerard Joling, Gordon, Guus Meeuwis and René Froger. Another notable Dutch band is Tambourine. In addition, there is a great number of bands that compose and perform pop and rock songs in the Dutch language. That started in the 1970s with Polle Eduard, Bots and Normaal - which sang in dialect. Late 70s and early 80s there was a big boom of bands that used the Dutch-speaking songs. ¹

Pioneers of Dutch rock were the so-called Indorock bands from the late 1950s, like The Tielman Brothers and the… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Music of the Netherlands”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

music of the Netherlands is overview of musical traditions in the Netherlands, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 5 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²