Summertime – A peculiar, summery reflection on the seasonal character of the work of Nits

The 37th shape is the Iceberg – This shape is also the title of a recent book by Henk Hofstede (on the occasion of Nits’s 50th birthday) with a collection of video stills selected from his large film archive.

It is summer. 
But Nits don’t really do summer, nor summer songs. 
Summer never lasts long in their musical world. It is most of the time a sweet memory – “a summer a long time ago”, “summer was green”, the time of a bike ride through the neighbourhood, a summer once upon a time as it were – or a tender promise  buried under the leaves of a beautiful, expectant or reflective autumn or winter. It is there only for one blue day so it seems, without a cloud. Soon the days will be grey again with rain or snowflakes. Underneath the flowing surface of the music, the presence of an already frozen world of bygones and memories is hiding. Photographs, cameras and videos are the constant companion of the music of Nits, a continuous testimony of the ephemerality of the present moment. Summer never lasts long … except when you’re a child.
Nits tell the story of a mountainous, green, colourful world, yet the landscape of home is flat and it rains … This wonderfully subtle coming together of promise and memory, of actual presence and beauty on the one hand and the awareness of transience on the other, turns the work of Nits into this exquisite mouth or estuary where a small world of music tales slowly flows into an eternity of time, with memories and a feeling of melancholy at its core. It is perhaps one of the main reasons why I feel so attached to their music of being. The iceberg hiding underneath. The noteworthy and momentous appearance of ice in some of their songs is only a tip of an ever growing frozen mountain of memories. The iceberg is what will eventually remain of those Dutch Mountains of youth and wonder. Ice preserves.

Music of the seasons is not really the typical sound of pop. Most pop music doesn’t have the patience nor the inclination to listen to and observe the changing of the seasons. The work of Nits in the way it is closely hugged by our experience of time and the way it seems to mirror the different gradations of light in our eyes, is always in tune with the soft spinning of our world. When I listen, I feel the seasons act out their play of colours and moods in the songs of Nits.

My favourite all-time-all-genre song is not really a Nits song. It is the opening song of the folk opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, called “Summertime”. Not because summer is my preferred season; it is not. But it is precisely because of the contradiction the song beholds, because of the imperfection it whispers of what is real as opposed to the ideal of a warm and sunny summer with its boundless carefreeness. The ideal of what could be, against the reality of what is. The hope and longing it expresses with its imagery of beauty and insouciance, not unlike the way Nits do music and Henk Hofstede writes lyrics. It is longing at its deepest expressed in a melody of the heavens and the words of the earth. It is a feeling I also get when listening to the music of Nits. It is anchored firmly in the ground at water’s edge, yet always preparing to set sail into a world of an unattainable perpetuity of beauty and lightheartedness. I love this combination. It is why music can offer us such heartwarming solace, hope and contentment with at its base the intuitive, innate flow of melancholy. It is the sweetest promise that music can make us…

“Summertime” is set in a somewhat oppressing milieu of an African-American community – Catfish Row – in the deep south of America. It is a world of poverty, cruelty and addiction where Porgy and Bess try to safeguard their love for one another. The song itself is a lullaby, sung by the character Clara to her baby that would later on become orphaned. The beautiful song – unknowingly carrying all the tragedy that will follow -, in the beginning holds only innocence and the feeling of a warm home. A whispered promise. A dream. A pledge Clara and the father of her child won’t be able to fulfil. 
But others might perhaps …?
The music of Nits is aware of the emanating cold from the iceberg’s presence. Life in a Northern town, through the events that shaped its big and little histories, more than once, might have given them the feeling that the world would freeze. The water of the river Amstel that once was flowing from one moment into another, will freeze eventually. And Nits don’t fear it. Ice is a beautiful form and shape that Nits cherish all throughout their lyrical world. Its crystalline opaqueness of a story that has been told through musical sparkle. The story remains firm; it is the story of an affirmation that happiness in life is there for the taking if we look around for it. This is almost an impossible accomplishment, but Nits achieved it in my eyes. Nits keep the promise alive. Making music about being happy in a world of valleys, mountains, rivers and trees: “My ice princess once was made of wood and water” … Not (only or mainly) in the elation of the festive, fun-making, short-lasting moment of the party of life, but in the contentment of a joyous everyday commitment to wonder and beauty.

“Summertime – And the living is easy”. I often get the impression that Nits interpret and impersonate their music in the manner of this magnificent line. Their hours of music are imbued with an eternal light of the summertime of childhood days. The hurting and the problems are nevertheless present in the form of a wondrous heart warming melancholy that keeps the music afloat through its many meanderings of beauty and longing. Optimism is a moral duty, so they say … and the non-preacher-men of Nits hold this claim high on their list of duties! Nits are dutiful indeed; they insist on fulfilling their due to life and world themselves. Nits are committed to life and world with a loyalty and reverence that are unmatched. It’s a task they spontaneously assigned to themselves and their music. Their musical and lyrical authority followed naturally in the wake of this appreciative responsibility they took vis-à-vis world and life. 
“Fish are jumping – And the cotton is high”, all the drama of life hiding underneath the tables and the chairs, around the fish and in the wool of sheep… the sugar rivers and the apple orchards …The musical legacy of Nits might eventually feel like the “frozen moment of a summer’s day”. The tip of an iceberg of moments washed away by time.
The ice might be nothing but an ice cream floor for the child, but there is something haunting, hiding in the music. Singing “Goodnight” to the child, a lullaby of Nits for the baby softly rocking in its cradle: Ice Ice Baby. But sometimes there is something haunting, hiding in the music and the words… Lullabies for the child we all once were and perhaps still are. With daddy and mammy standing by. Music as solace, compassion and companionship. Music as a tale of hope. Everything’s alright. 
I’d love to hear Nits play and sing “Summertime” … one fine day … The summer song they never made. The summer song they made time and time again.
But ice preserves.

Joke Roelandt, July 2025