Context

Since 2019, Dutch music theatre makers Leonore Spee and Sascha Bornkamp have been looking into the treasure trove of Flemish folk songs. Starting from a fascination with the Dutch language, they develop various co-creative methodologies to place the old songs in a new-city context and seek new forms to make the heritage speak to a wide audience.

What began as a two-year research project at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp grew into a series of projects, each starting from the same question: How can recreating folk songs stimulate an inclusive dialogue between residents of the 21st-century metropolis?

For example, Teletext, in collaboration with many Antwerp and Flemish partners, has already created the musical theatre performance Ryswyck, the three-part conversation series The Scheldt Conversations, the Scheldt EP, the arts education project Genoveva and festival A Nyeu Liedeken. In addition, they made a reworking of the poem The Departure by Paul van Ostaijen for Infected City (DeBuren), they created the musical audio walk Art ennobles for the Voo?uit in Ghent and created the location performance Sweet Gerritje based on the Den Bosch folk song of the same name.

The New Antwerp Songbook - explanatory notes

In a study of the relevance of Flemish folk music, the Antwerp songbook of 1544 cannot be missing. When Teletext first opens this 221-song collection, a spark strikes. The alienating, mythical Old Dutch demands to be deciphered and spoken anew by contemporary voices. In summer 2020, Teletext will be a resident at Brussels music centre VOLTA. Together with a number of young artists, including Fulco Ottervanger, Simon Michelena and Prisca Agnes Nishimwe, they are exploring the artistic workability of the material. As a result of this preliminary research, the idea grows of expanding this project and thus working towards a New Antwerp Songbook.

As the makers of the most recent edition of the Antwerps liedboek in 2004 themselves point out, the Antwerps liedboek is never ‘finished’: “We are fully aware that even with this edition the last word about the Antwerps liedboek cannot be said, and hope in turn that this book will inspire others to delve into this fascinating matter: a great many songs are, even in academic circles, hardly known at all, and even the more well-known songs are all too often still surrounded by riddles.” (quoted from: the Antwerps liedboek volume 2, Ten geleide, page 7, 2004).

Sascha Bornkamp and Leonore Spee take this call to heart. In the coming policy period, they will create a new edition of this iconic collection of songs. This edition will be produced in cooperation with a large group of Antwerp citizens: artists, philosophers, historians, associations, young and old, local residents and expats. Each of them reworks a song from the collection, in total freedom as regards content and form, accompanied by Teletext. This creates an inclusive and contemporary edition of an almost five hundred-year-old document.

Elaboration

Between 2022 and 2025, a large-scale research project will be realised focusing on the following questions:

- How can we, together with a diverse group of (great) Antwerp citizens, recreate the anthems from the Antwerp songbook so that they speak for us, 21st-century Antwerp citizens?

- How can we develop new, participatory forms of canonisation that adopt a more inclusive understanding of the canon and allow for constant re-creation and critical perspectives?

- What form does a reissue of the Antwerp songbook take when we explicitly situate it in the 21st century?

The project is a collaboration between Teletext and WALPURGIS and Erfgoedlab Antwerpen. Trix and Museum Vleeshuis, among others, are stepping into the project as residency and showcase partners.