I
Nineties

With the '90s house music finally caught up with Hi-NRG being popular in the rest of Europe since the seventies. And with huge success. Acts like 2 Unlimited, T-Spoon, Vengaboys became the Netherlands's prime musical export product next to classical violinist André Rieu and his Orchestra whose creed was 'No House, but Strauss'. More daring electronic music was made by Quazar, Speedy J and Orlando Voorn.

The dance scene in Rotterdam took German techno in overdrive and named it gabber (gabba) which is basically Hoempa at 220 beats per minute. Dubbed hardcore techno in other European countries its music was as simple as it was effective. Gabber had it’s finest hour with the 1992 hit Poing. Succesfull acts were DJ Paul Elstak, Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo and the Party Animals.

Genuine funk-metal-hiphop-dance-crossover Urban Dance Squad, pop outfit Loïs Lane, guitar-driven pop band Bettie Serveert, saxophonist Candy Dulfer, pop duo Ten Sharp and soulful pop band Total Touch (with singer Trijntje Oosterhuis) strongly benefited from new governmental funding for pop music. Dutch-language rockers the Scene would finally make their mark in the nineties (after being around in the eighties) with succesfull albums,

Having become a multi-cultural society, in the '90s the Netherlands boosted world music artists, mostly with either Turkish or Moroccan roots (East Meets West, Jeunes Turcs, Raïland and Noujoum Raï). To add to this multi cultural and lingual landscape the province added with bands singing in dialect. Seventies act Normaal was still around but De Kast, Skik and Rowwen Hèze were new and played old fashioned folklore music mixed with modern pop.

Hiphop started to gain a wider audience in the nineties kicking of with .the All Star Fresh of King Bee topping charts with: 'Back by dope demand' in the early nineties. The Osdorp Posse were the founders of Dutch rap or Nederhop. Their frontman, Def P (Pascal Griffioen), switched from English to Dutch in 1988, which made him the first to rap in Dutch. That year, Def P, IJsblok, King and Seda formed the Osdorp Posse. Over the years, they explored all sides of hiphop, from poetic hiphop to politically engaged hiphop. They introduced several Anglicisms in the Dutch language, such as 'moederneuker' ('motherfucker'). Extince (Peter Kops), Brainpower (Gert-Jan Mulder), Def Rhymz (Dennis Bouman) and Postmen are other well known rap-acts

The tv shows of entertainer Paul de Leeuw played an important role in reintroducing Levenslied and Dutch sung pop. Artists like Willeke Alberti and Ruth Jaccot thank their (reborn) popularity after his TV shows. Another person who held Dutch sung pop high was singer and songwriter Jan Rot. He switched form English to Dutch at the start of the nineties with the album 'Hoop & liefde' ('Hope and love'). During the decade he would also write and produce for former sixties teenage stars like Anneke Grönloh. And the nineties also saw the return of pirate radio. This time not from the sea but from the province. And this time not pushing English sung rock but Dutch sung. Levenslied artists like Marianne Weber, Frans Bauer, Jannes, Dries Roelvink, Grad Damen and Wolter Kroes The first two soon spread out to the German Schlager market. The Cabaret and Kleinkunst genre was boosted by new talent of which duo Acda & De Munnik became the most succesfull.

Three acts originating in the nineties would turn out to become local superstars. Half Dutch- half Italian singer Marco Borsato, poprock band Bløf and rock chanteuse Anouk would go on to fill stadiums in the new millennium. The first two in the Dutch language, the last in English.