Frail echoes of singing in the streets. Tracing ballad sellers and their reputation in the Low Countries

Abstract

This article discusses opposing representations of the Dutch ballad singer as political rebel versus entertainer and performer. It reveals how these representations were shaped, how they interacted in cultural practices and how they changed in the Low Countries in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The underlying question is the relevancy of these street singers in the process of public opinion formation. The period under scrutiny is highly relevant in the context of Dutch history, because it covers the rise of the reformist movement, the revolt of the Northern provinces against the Spanish King, the establishment of the Dutch Republic and growing importance of the local cultural infrastructure. One of the main conclusions is that from the mid‐fifteenth century onwards and including the seventeenth century, ballads and street singing, entertaining as well as propagandistic, were generally seen as a form propaganda and subversion. Despite the often tolerated and even appreciated entertaining function of ballads, the ballad singer from the Dutch revolt onwards remained a distrusted figure.

Popular es radical. Anticlericalismo y sexo libre en la literatura de cordel española (siglos XVIII-XIX)

“…Los trabajos pioneros de Botrel en los que se analizaba la actividad del ciego coplero en España destacaron ya su condición de "colaborador objetivo del poder"; la novedad en este punto es que los estudios contemporáneos ponen el énfasis en la posición ambivalente del cantor popular, que por un lado es correa de transmisión de las consignas ideológicas de las autoridades y por otro se hace eco de los discursos disidentes. En Holanda, es al mismo tiempo y en difícil equilibrio "entertainer and performer" por un lado y "political rebel" por otro (Salman, 2018). En España, la concesión de su oficio en régimen de monopolio comporta, antes que un beneficio, una estrategia del poder para controlar su actividad, tal como demuestra la abundante legislación y los numerosos pleitos en los que se vieron envueltas las hermandades de ciegos cantores (Botrel y Gomis, 2019).…”