‘This is a strange story / where to start where to end / what are thesedestinations / neither he nor we understand’ read the (translated) openinglines of a song by the Indian singer Lata Mangeshkar. She briefly came by inthe program From Life , in which several people who died this year comeforward 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 scenesof Indian films. When she passed away in February this year, India declaredtwo days of national mourning.
Two days of national mourning for a singer who dies: would that be possible inthe Netherlands? Even Henny Vrienten and Jan Rot, both represented withbeautiful items From Life , had to do without that honor. But maybe LeeTowers has a chance. Like Mangeshkar, he is self-taught and he also got anickname: the singing crane driver. In Portrait Lee Towers he explained onNPO 1 that he was happy with the mistake Willem Duys made in the announcementat the time. He was a maintenance engineer, but that appealed a lot less tothe imagination. Who ever John Appel movie André Hazes, She Believes in Me(1999), this portrait of Lee Towers was the complete opposite. Towers receivespraise (and to be fair, he also attributed it to himself) from Anita Meyer andRené Froger, after this documentary you can only conclude: Lee Towers deservesat 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 havebeen greater: 80 percent of the Top 2000 is occupied by male musicians. Reasonfor 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 andS10, and for more women anyway. Earlier ‘Herman the screen man’ – who growsinto his role here as presenter/interviewer with every episode – had alsoshown how different the list would look if only women voted, for example.
Back to national mourning. Dennis Wiersma, the VVD Minister for Primary andSecondary Education, was also a guest at the Top 2000 a gogo. He was allowedto bring a song from the past that had a special meaning to him. Where wepreviously heard Willie Wartaal tell beautifully about his mother’s drugaddiction and the significance that Sinéad O’Connor’s song ‘Nothing Compares 2U’ had had for him, Wiersma chose Fluitsma & Van Tijn for their song ’15Million people’ .
Most Dutch people are tired of polarization, according to the SCP, but thischoice cannot go uncommented. At first you thought that there was a ministerwith black humor here: if you are against immigrants as a party, thenpromoting a song about 15 million people in a country where more than 17million people live is unfriendly, but not unwitting. However, Wiersma was notjoking, he was serious. We should not interpret his choice politically, thissong 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 theNetherlands. And we should not be under any illusions about those two days ofnational mourning for a Dutch singer.