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"Geef mij maar Amsterdam" ("I prefer Amsterdam") is a 1955 song about Amsterdam by Dutch singer Johnny Jordaan. The text is by Pi Veriss, and the music is written by Harry de Groot. A hit song when it was first released, it is one of the songs Amsterdammers identify with most. [1]
The song is a waltz in 4/4, with accordion accompaniment. The lyrics proclaim the singer's preference over all cities, especially Paris. The verse narrates how a klaverjas club from Amsterdam took a week-long trip to Paris. The club secretary had studied French for a month but was unintelligible, then ended up singing on the Place Pigalle. The baker suffered from vertigo on the Eiffel Tower and was saved only by the butcher, before everyone went down to the Champs-Elysees where they sang "Geef mij maar Amsterdam". The song ends, "I'd rather be penniless in Mokum than have a million bucks in Paris."
Geef mij maar Amsterdam, dat is mooier dan Parijs
Geef mij maar Amsterdam, mijn Mokums paradijs
Geef mij maar Amsterdam, met zijn Amstel en het IJ
Want in Mokum ben ik rijk en gelukkig tegelijk
Geef mij maar Amsterdam!
(I prefer Amsterdam, it's nicer than Paris; I prefer Amsterdam, my Mokum paradise. I prefer Amsterdam, with the Amstel and the IJ; Because in Mokum I'm rich and happy, I prefer Amsterdam.)
Amsterdam is the capital and most populated city of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Amstel is a river in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. It flows from the Aarkanaal and Drecht in Nieuwveen northwards, passing Uithoorn, Amstelveen, and Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, to the IJ in Amsterdam, to which the river gives its name. Annually, the river is the location of the Liberation Day concert, Head of the River Amstel rowing match, and the Amsterdam Gay Pride boat parade.
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Johnny Jordaan was the pseudonym for Johannes Hendricus van Musscher, a Dutch singer of popular music, in particular the genre known as levenslied, a Dutch variety of the French chanson. He was well known for his songs about the city of Amsterdam, especially the Jordaan district, which he sang in a typical "hiccuping Mokum vibrato", "Mokum" being the Hebrew-derived nickname for the Amsterdam inner city area. In the 1950s, Johnny Jordaan rose almost instantly to the level of national celebrity and became the "uncrowned king of the Jordaanlied", and his hit song "Geef mij maar Amsterdam" is one of the songs Amsterdammers identify with most.
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The Jordaanlied is a type of levenslied, the Dutch genre of nostalgic sentimental popular music; the Jordaanlied hails from and sings the praises of the Amsterdam neighborhood the Jordaan which, until the 1960s, was an impoverished working-class area. The genre first came to the fore in the late 19th century and reached extraordinary popularity in the 1950s, before becoming old-fashioned quickly when rock and roll came along. It continues to be sung in the now-yuppified Jordaan, as a local favorite and a tourist attraction in a profoundly changed neighborhood; already a nostalgic genre when it was first made popular, the situations it describes and the emotions it evokes are no longer directly accessible even by the older generations, a transformation due in part to the Jordaanlied itself.
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The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands.