Johnny Jordaanplein: The Singers in Bronze

Why is it significant?

Here they are, the bronze crowd on the little square at the end of the Elandsgracht: singers and an accordion player, life size, frozen at the best moment of the party. Go ahead and stand among them. Everybody does.

Key Facts

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Here they are, the bronze crowd on the little square at the end of the Elandsgracht: singers and an accordion player, life size, frozen at the best moment of the party. Go ahead and stand among them. Everybody does.

The singer in the middle of it all is Johnny Jordaan, born Johannes van Musscher in 1924, a boy from this neighbourhood who became the voice of Amsterdam. From the 1950s he sang the sentimental, swaying songs of the Jordaan, about mothers and canals and lost love and the city itself, and his recordings of songs like Geef mij maar Amsterdam, roughly Just give me Amsterdam, made him a national star.

Around him stand his companions of the Jordaan song: Tante Leen, Aunt Leen, the beloved singer of the neighbourhood cafés, Manke Nelis, and the accordionist Johnny Meijer. This was music made in smoky bars and at street parties, sung by everyone at once, with an accordion and a lot of beer. The Jordaan had its own accent, its own humour, its own street festival, and these were its stars.

Johnny Jordaan's life was not as simple as his songs. He was gay in a time when that could cost a singer his career, and the neighbourhood that adored his voice did not always want to know about his private life. He died in 1989, and the city gave him this square, and then his friends, in bronze, one by one.

So the walk ends where it should: not with a monument to a merchant, a regent or a king, but with ordinary people singing. Hidden courtyards, Monday markets, riots over eels and over bread, a broker in coffee and a lost atlas... the Jordaan has always been poor, stubborn, musical and proud. Find a café on the Prinsengracht, order something, and if anyone starts to sing, you know what to do.