Dutch folklore

Dutch folklore

Traditional Dutch dances, folk music and costumes.

by Irina Raspopova

From 1998 I started to deepen me in the Dutch folklore. The Russian audience  heard  us, Dutch, sing  the Russian songs so wonderful and became also curious for  the Dutch folklore.  Many Dutch people do not appreciate their own folklore.  They think that simple and primitive. As specialist in the field of folklore music I felt it as my task to let them see that it is not true.  Loss of the tradition does not mean that that tradition does not exist.

To get people acquainted with the Dutch folklore tradition I make a careful choice from the extensive repertoire of this vanishing tradition and from the costumes, where I sometimes make a reconstruction of the dialogical polyphony, the improvisational methods and the folklore dance. Many specialists do think that the polyphony in the Dutch folklore songs is missing. Remaining are often only the most primitive, unisono children’s songs. I show that there must have been much more.  In our repertoire is now, in addition to Russian folklore songs, also included a number of interesting Dutch songs and dances and a piece of theatre. So now we present  the Russian audience also traditional Dutch songs and dancing in authentic costumes from various regions of the Netherlands.

Our repertoire consists of songs from the Middle Ages until the twentieth century, of different genres such as love song, narrative song, life songs, historic song, ritual song, freedom song, religious song, spot song, murder song, etc. Sources of the songs are song books, song sheets, song rules and fieldwork recordings, a.o. the CD box “Under the Green Linden” of the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam, recorded by Ate Doornbosch e.a.

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