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.