Cornelis Vreeswijk

Cornelis Vreeswijk (8 August 1937 – 12 November 1987) was a Dutch singer-songwriter and poet who lived and worked primarily in Sweden.

Born to Dutch parents in IJmuiden, Netherlands, he emigrated to Sweden with his parents in 1949 at the age of twelve. He was educated as a social worker and hoped to become a journalist, but became increasingly involved in music, performing at events for students with idiosyncratic humor and social engagement.

Though Vreeswijk never acquired Swedish citizenship, he is regarded as one of Sweden’s most influential troubadours, and has been described as something of a national poet, often compared to Evert Taube and Carl Michael Bellman for his poetic lyrics and social commentary. In 2010, the Swedish drama film Cornelis was made about his life, directed by Amir Chamdin.

Cornelis Vreeswijk was born and grew up in the Netherlands. He emigrated to Sweden with his parents in 1949 at the age of twelve. He left school in 1955 and went to sea, where he passed the time playing the blues. He returned to Sweden in 1959. He was educated as a social worker at Stockholm University and hoped to become a journalist, but became increasingly involved in music, performing at events for students with idiosyncratic humor and social engagement.

Vreeswijk explained in one of his few interviews that he had taught himself to sing and play in the fifties by imitating his first idols Josh White and Lead Belly. His first album, Ballader och oförskämdheter (Ballads and rudenesses, 1964), was a hit which immediately gained him a large following among the emerging radical student generation. In this period he also played with Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson and his trio. His songs "Ångbåtsblues" ("Steam Boat Blues") and "Jubelvisa för Fiffiga Nanette" ("Joyful song for Clever Nanette") are classics from these recordings. His abrasive, frequently political lyrics and unconventional delivery were a deliberate break with what he was later to describe as a Swedish song tradition of pretty singing and harmless lyrics, "a hobby for the upper classes". Influenced by jazz and blues and especially by the singing style and social criticism of Georges Brassens, Vreeswijk "speak-sings" his "insults", and compels his listeners to pay close attention to the words.

His translation of Allan Sherman's masterpiece "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" remains beloved to Swedes as "Brev från kolonien" (Letter from the summer camp) decades later, and could be said to have passed into folklore.

A political singer with a bohemian lifestyle, Vreeswijk remained controversial in the sixties and early seventies, idolized by his fans but disapproved of by many others for his "rude" language and persistent interest in "unsuitable" people like prostitutes and criminals. Some of his records were blacklisted by the public broadcasting company Sveriges Radio. During this period, he not only wrote and recorded songs now considered classics, such as "Sportiga Marie" ("Sporty Marie") and several affectionate salutes to the ever less employable "Polaren Pär" ("My Buddy Pär"), but he was an actor on the stage, receiving considerable critical acclaim, most notably as Pilate in the Swedish version of Jesus Christ Superstar, and as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He participated in Melodifestivalen (the Swedish preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest) in 1972 with "Önskar du mig, så önskar jag dig", which finished sixth. He also appeared in movies, including Svarta Palmkronor (Black Palm Trees, 1968), which was filmed on location in Brazil. Spending four months in Brazil began Vreeswijk's lifelong interest in Latin American music and social and political conditions, later seen for example in his Victor Jara album of 1978.

Later in his career, Vreeswijk was to gain increasing fame and a wider audience both for his songs and his other work. He published several volumes of poetry in his lifetime and left a considerable manuscript legacy of poems which have been published since. He also became an important musical interpreter of the works of other people, recording the songs of Carl Michael Bellman, Evert Taube, and Lars Forssell. His fresh, bluesy renderings of Bellman and Taube, who had up to then been classics belonging to the "harmless" tradition that Vreeswijk despised, were artistic and commercial successes which extended his fanbase. The choice of Bellman was significant: Bellman's lively, romantic, pastoral, drinking and sometimes bawdy songs gained Vreeswijk the reputation of being a drunken womaniser, with the association of being "something of a Bellman himself". Like his friend Fred Åkerström, he gave Bellman's songs, "a new and more powerful expression" than they had had before, and like him identifying himself with Bellman's fictional character Fredman, expressing his drunkenness, poverty, and despair, with an intensity that increased in his performances over the years. Bellman's songs featured in many of his performances; two of his albums were dedicated to Bellman's songs, namely the 1971 Spring mot Ulla, spring! Cornelis sjunger Bellman containing 13 of Fredman's Epistles, and the 1977 Movitz! Movitz!, containing 12: the popular Epistle 81, Märk hur vår skugga, appears on both albums.