Stars, we don't really do that in the Netherlands. Our ground level does not allow diva behaviour. In our lowlands, you get a plus if you have stayed so nicely ordinary despite your success. Even if you stand in the Arena with your songs, like the Toppers, this weekend. How different it is in Istanbul. There, you are allowed to be shamelessly famous. Like singer Candan Erçetin, who made a guest appearance at the opening concert of the Holland Festival in Carré on Saturday 30 May.
Erçetin was announced by one of the singers from the band Kardeş Türküler, who had brought the room full of Dutch and Turkish guests to a boil in the forty-five minutes before her arrival. And normally, you come on smoothly then, to take in the applause all at once. So not Candan Erçetin. She made everyone on stage and in the hall wait painfully long for her arrival. Knowing that after that too-long void, the discharge would be 10 times more powerful. Thus, the star also reduced the performance of everyone else that night, including young Dutch star Karsu, to her supporting act. Her fellow singers turned into bitterly grinning rivals. Music connects what separates characters. Such chemistry is wonderful to witness.
Kardeş Türküler is a distinct company. Rooted in the liberal metropolis of Istanbul, they incorporate influences from all of Turkey's minority cultures into their repertoire. There is music from Kurdistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Thrace and Arabia. The ensemble itself is equally diverse in composition. Two women do the spirited percussion, two singers tackle the whole gamut of pretty high-class vocal techniques, and despite the exotic instruments like lute and ney, what they do sounds smooth, tight and above all swinging.
The audience at the opening was equally diverse, especially by Dutch standards. Now, the opening of the Holland Festival under previous director Pierre Audi had also regularly been in Oriental atmospheres, but this time it was fresher, more modern, less pompous and more open what was on stage and in the audience. Can't help but think that Ruth MacKenzie, Audi's successor, is making her mark powerfully on the prestigious festival with this. She tackles the festival's elitist reputation with free programmes, innovative elements like a 24-hour prom and an online house party with accompanying naked gogogirls.
As far as she is concerned, the elite cannot be big enough, she declared earlier during a meeting with people from HFYoung, the festival's special youth programme. The elite is not something exclusive, but something everyone should want to belong to, her statement read. Well. That mission has already largely succeeded with this opening. At the party afterwards, I heard only two people who thought the programme on offer was too light in quality for the Holland Festival.
The rest had had an excellent evening.
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