‘This is a strange story / where to start where to end / what are these destinations / neither he nor we understand’ read the (translated) opening lines of a song by the Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar. She briefly came by in the program From Life, in which several people who died this year come forward with something more than just a photo, as in annual overviews. Mangeshkar was in the block of deceased people who are huge in their country, but little known to us. ‘The nightingale of Bollywood’, as she was nicknamed, has sung more than 30,000 songs in 36 different languages behind the scenes of Indian films. When she passed away in February this year, India declared two days of national mourning.
Two days of national mourning for a singer who dies: would that be possible in the Netherlands? Even Henny Vrienten and Jan Rot, both represented with beautiful items From Life, had to do without that honor. But maybe Lee Towers has a chance. Like Mangeshkar, he is self-taught and he also got a nickname: the singing crane driver. In Portrait Lee Towers he explained on NPO 1 that he was happy with the mistake Willem Duys made in the announcement at the time. He was a maintenance engineer, but that appealed a lot less to the imagination. Who ever John Appel movie André Hazes, She Believes in Me (1999), this portrait of Lee Towers was the complete opposite. Towers receives praise (and to be fair, he also attributed it to himself) from Anita Meyer and René Froger, after this documentary you can only conclude: Lee Towers deserves at least two days, at least in Rotterdam.
‘You Never Walk Alone’ is the only song by Towers to reach the Top 2000 (Hazes, the singing bartender, has 14). Statistically, his chance could have been greater: 80 percent of the Top 2000 is occupied by male musicians. Reason for guest Lisa Loeb to appear in the fourth episode of the Top 2000 a gogo put on her “activist pink glitter dress” and make a plea for more Froukje and S10, and for more women anyway. Earlier ‘Herman the screen man’ – who grows into his role here as presenter/interviewer with every episode – had also shown how different the list would look if only women voted, for example.
Back to national mourning. Dennis Wiersma, the VVD Minister for Primary and Secondary Education, was also a guest at the Top 2000 a gogo. He was allowed to bring a song from the past that had a special meaning to him. Where we previously heard Willie Wartaal tell beautifully about his mother’s drug addiction and the significance that Sinéad O’Connor’s song ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ had had for him, Wiersma chose Fluitsma & Van Tijn for their song ’15 Million people’ .
Most Dutch people are tired of polarization, according to the SCP, but this choice cannot go uncommented. At first you thought that there was a minister with black humor here: if you are against immigrants as a party, then promoting a song about 15 million people in a country where more than 17 million people live is unfriendly, but not unwitting. However, Wiersma was not joking, he was serious. We should not interpret his choice politically, this song was Dutch melancholy. That whole idea about how ‘we value people’ and ‘being a country of a thousand opinions’ is: it was still true, wasn’t it?
Politicians and culture: it remains a complicated combination in the Netherlands. And we should not be under any illusions about those two days of national mourning for a Dutch singer.
replaced Rinskje Koelewijn this week