A Home in Time

We’ve heard the song a million times, we might even have become tired of it. It almost bores us so to speak, by way of its familiarity and everydayness. By its repeated appearance at the end of every show. It’s so odd then that, even after multiple listenings, this song still holds a magical power of belonging. Watching the video, listening to the original version of this song, I can’t help but being struck by the enormously fine sense of history, of time and place, that is hidden in this well-known piece of music.

I will not make the following statement very often, but in this case I’m very convinced of its truth: the meaning of this song can only be fully grasped while watching the videoclip that was issued along with it. Just look at it, it gives me goosebumps time and time again. I don’t know many songs in popular culture (I don’t, however, rank Nits in this unfortunate category) that are so necessarily entwined with their visual counterpart; “In the Dutch Mountains” is like a little movie-song, a unique genre if you ask me,- hence its enchanting power -, I don’t mean just a song that could appear in a movie, but a song that is a movie all in itself, and a fairy tale, a fable on our place in the world, a revelatory philosophy lesson and a lesson in history, an allegory of music opening up and exploding into a world.

I think Nits have always been fascinated by the combination of music and images. We know Henk Hofstede is an avid filmer. The movement of sound and the movement of images just belong to one another in his way of looking at the world. Nits have treated us so many times to small marvels on the screens placed behind their instruments, often very surprising, unusual images, unexpected ones precisely because of their familiarity, nothing exotic or spectacular or of an obvious, sought after aestheticism, no, most of the time, the images feel natural, spontaneous, innocent, naive even, playful, just taken away out of an everyday scene and put on the screen without much interference, without much adjustment or perfectioning, snapshots of things that occur. The task of fine-tuning is taken on with great precision by the music itself. As the music comes to life, a playworld develops before our eyes. The present tense of the music is often accompanied by images from the past. The camera of Nits is not preoccupied with the present in an obsessive way, like our phone lenses nowadays so clearly are. Their eyes seem to be for ever looking for what connects the present moment with what has come before, what stays the same through the different times, the landscapes that continue for centuries, the buildings and streets of centuries-old European towns, footsteps, traces we leave while we make our own way through the world, along the path of previous generations, people who were not so very different from us. Henk Hofstede as a storyteller, always brings the past into the present with a flair so evident and easy that makes all time borders disappear. Nits integrate past cultural elements and fabrications, traditions and habits seamlessly into their musical homeworld as no other pop band has done before. It makes for an exceptional world, with the colours and lights of history dusted off and brought back to life in a sort of renaissance of old and new European sounds and visions. You cannot but feel a whole spectrum of historical places and times whirling through their music and lyrics. This music has a homestead and a history in which it has been basking for the longest time… In “In the Dutch Mountains”, Henk Hofstede on a bicycle and Rob Kloet in a rowing boat, reveal themselves as the generous hosts in a world of creation where sweet homeyness and a curiosity for other places and for what was, are just natural allies. And at the same time, the Dutch landscape and streets are presented in the form of an idyllic movie which celebrates their natural and easy comfort; when you look attentively, you’ll spot the darker, more somber images of another place, far away, which look less friendly…

And what is so nicely done in this miniature movie-song is the addition of the natural sounds that came with the video, transposed on top of the song: the centuries-old sounds of the wind in the reed, the dear old mooing of the cows, the wooden noise of the oars moving against the little rowing boat and their squeaking against the iron ring by which they are fastened, these sounds could take us back to the Middle Ages and beyond, or to freshly made memories, like the water softly sloshing against the boat, which takes me back to my own summer holidays, or the tinkling of the proud bicycle bell that sounds like the one of my grandfather, Henk even looks perhaps like him, my granddad in his younger years, all these fragments of different times unite in this classic evergreen of barely 4 minutes long. In timeless, faded, nostalgic colours that make the heart ache and long for everything that has gone by and for everything that is still to come. The cherubic voices in a fairytale of Dutchness (ooohwhohhhohh), in an anachronistic nature-religion of meadows, rivers and skies, it’s all of such a fragile eternity that makes you sigh and smile and wonder what’s it all about, this world of the senses, so precious and rich, always on the move, always renewing itself, taking with it whatever memories it can grasp. Yes, music and world are always one for Nits.

And of course, this song isn’t just about their cherished home country. It’s about how truly belonging somewhere opens up the heart for exploring the bigger world outside, makes it easier to distinguish what is essential from what one can easily live without. And their closeness to and fondness for their world and its simplicity, its uncomplicatedness, which is something we should for ever treasure, if, yes, if it is still there… And the joy of moving around in the(ir) world… while the cows are watching on… And…?

Never ending

The movie-song “In the Dutch Mountains”, based on a true story. Starring, in order of appearance: Rob Kloet as the man in the boat. Henk Hofstede as the man on the bicycle

Joke Roelandt, April 2020