Paper short abstract:

This presentation will focus on the city of Maastricht, the capital of the Dutch province of Limburg, in the specific setting of ‘André Rieu Vrijthof Concerts.’ These concerts transform the city annually from a local place to a global space, while affecting the cityscape and local city life.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will focus on the city of Maastricht, the capital of the Dutch province of Limburg, in the specific setting of 'André Rieu Vrijthof Concerts.' In the Netherlands, stereotypical oppositions qualify 'Limburg', and hence Maastricht, as the nation's utmost periphery and the Randstad, the conurbation of Western Holland - with at its heart the nation's capital Amsterdam and its elite - as the financial, cultural and intellectual centre. André Rieu - 'the world's king of the Waltz' - is both a musician of world fame and a native inhabitant of Maastricht; the Vrijthof is Maastricht's central square. Rieu and his Johan Strauss Orchestra tour the world, but each summer they return 'home' to give a sequence of performances on the Vrijthof. Although regarded by the nation's elite as a commercial impresario producing 'classical music for those who do not like classical music', his success made Rieu also the embodiment of the cultural potential and grandeur of Maastricht.

The sheer magnitude of Rieu's global presence offers an excellent example of popular culture upsetting and altering taken-for-granted local-national-global power relations and hierarchies. Based on ethnographic research conducted during the 2013 and 2014 Vrijthof concerts, I will address Maastricht's annual transformation from a local place to a global space, distinctly present on the world map, and flesh out some of the impacts on the cityscape and life in the city.