’Holland’s Hope still lives’

Freek de Jonge continued fifty years ago with Bram Vermeulen his first steps in the cabaret as Holland’s Hope in Fearful Days. Tuesday plays a wide variety of artists, the songs and conferences of the duo. For the 73-year-old an entertainer is the show in Carré by no means a history lesson.

“It is clear that the repertoire still lives,” he says, after the end of try-outs in Den Bosch. “The audience in the hall could some conferences still meezeggen. And the songs are still pal up”,

In Amsterdam games, among others, Spinvis, Tim Knol and Paul de Munnik the work of Holland’s Hope. That the ’younger’ generation gives songs like The Old Woman or The Transgression of Uncle Daan again a very personal twist. “It sounds surprisingly contemporary. They are also amazed about the power of text and music”, according to Freek, who, during all the preparations especially was impressed with singer Sanneke van der Meulen. “She had a great voice and waved the pan.”

Also outside the theaters keeps the 73-year-old an entertainer, the Dutch music of now in the holes. And if he had a second life began as an artist, he is probably on the hip-hop dedicated to it. “If Holland’s Hope now did not exist, we were just like the Youth of Today. That is the music of now. They have the same commitment, the same way they view the world openly.”

That Dutch and Flemish artists, the oeuvre of Holland’s Hope again to repeat, it is not a coincidence. The performance in Amsterdam is the sale of a cd box with the complete works of Freek and Bram, with three associated books about the duo. The conclusion of it, confronted Freek the last half year with the loss of his old companion, who in 2004 died suddenly of a cardiac arrest.

“I look forward with enormous satisfaction and pride back in what we in these years have put. We have each other to a great height, whipped up, but I find it extremely unfortunate that he can’t make.”