
[pictures by Rosa van Ederen]
21h
The mother tongue is a form of music that works against rigid brains
CONVERSATION with
Arnold De Boer “Zea”, Music Prize
by Flavio Giacchero
Frisian language
Biography
Arnold de Boer (Zea, The Ex, Makkum Records) began his musical career as a singer and guitarist in the mid-1990s by founding Zea. In the beginning band Zea consisted of five elements, later it became a duo and since 2009 it has been a one-element band that collaborates with different artists depending on projects (album release or live performances). Zea has released seven albums, the latest of which, entitled Summing, in collaboration with pianist and improviser Oscar Jan Hoogland (MR29, 2020).
In 2009 De Boer was invited by the legendary Dutch underground band The Ex to become the band’s new singer and guitarist. Currently, he has released four albums with this band, the latest of which is “27 Passports”, released in 2018.
During the past ten years, with his record label Maccum Record De Boer has also released self-produced music and a wide selection of “brave” music from all over the world.
In 2017, Zea released his first Frisian language album, Moan gean ik dea, which was very well received internationally.
In 2021, his second Frisian-language album, Witst noch dat d’r neat wie, was released.
Zea’s Frisian-language compositions are personal, intimate and direct, lyrics are poetic. De Boer works both on her own lyrics and on compositions by other writers, poets and songwriters. On his new album, Zea uses poems by Bert Schierbeek, Hans Faverey, and Benjamin Mays.
Objectively, in creation of this new Frisian language album, it becomes increasingly clear that language plays a very central role: language as source, language as wall, language as weapon, language as time, language as nothingness, language as history, language as musical form. This emerges in many songs.
Since Zea publishes his music internationally and he himself lives in Amsterdam, where he speaks mainly Dutch and English, as well as the Frisian spoken in his family, it seems obvious that lyrics in his new album should also be translated and published in English and Dutch. These are three languages that orbit Zea, mastered by De Boer, handled and used individually and in relation to each other. The history of song lyrics is curious. Hein Ersel’s text, for example, De Boer found in an issue of a literary magazine called De Tsierne, published in Suriname in September 1952, was in Frisian (translated by Anne Wadman) . But the origin of that text was in Sranan (Creole language of English origin) although there was also a version in Dutch somewhere. So Sranan appears here as a fourth language. We find similar situation of language admixture for French language translation of Hans Faverey’s poem Roeiers. De Boer found a book of Faverey’s poems (translated into French), in a store in Paris, later he also found a nice English translation of the same poem (J.M. Coetzee). And might there also exist a translation into the Gullah language (a Creole language spoken in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) of the poem I have just a minute by Benjamin E Mays , who grew up in South Carolina, in the United States, where this minority language is still spoken? And would it be possible that there was a Wùhànhuà (variant of Chinese spoken in Wuhan) version of the song Fuort by De Boer himself, since the lyrics originated in the Covid 19 period? That’s suggestions created with every lyric in every song. There’s a “fourth language”, a bridge to the rest of the world, the connection to the unknown and the uncontrolled. And so the idea arises to unearth, in each of the fifteen lyrics, both the “fourth language” and the bridges to the rest of world, to give prints a nice book accompanied by the LP or CD, to present this publication in Friesland and the rest of the Netherlands, Europe, the World, preferably performing with guests. The idea of using design, print and other visual materials such as videos to tell the personal story of language as a source of uncertainty and pluriformity, as an antidote to absolutism and dogmatism; language as music’s form that works against rigid brains.
Discography
2000 – Kowtow To An Idiot CD (dream 7)
2003 – Today I Forgot To Complain CD (dream 25)
2003 – We Buried Idie Rock Years Ago 7” (dream 24)
2005 – One Bomb Fits All – Remix 12” (dream 26)
2006 – Insert Parallel Universe CD (dream 33)
2009 – We Better Boil Soup Of The Grown-Ups 7” (mr 1)
2009 – Super Cosmotics, split 7” (mr 2)
2010 – The Beginner CD / LP (mr4)
2012 – Bourgeois Blues 7” (mr5)
2014 – The Swimming City CD / LP (mr10)
2015 – The 7” Cassette (mr15)
2017 – Moarn Gean Ik Dea CD / LP (mr20/SR79)
2019 – Agency 7” (mr26)
2020 – Summing CD / LP (mr29)
2021 – Witst noch dat d’r neat wie LP / CD (mr33/SR119)
Concerts
1999 – Ruïne van Brederode en Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam met live soundtrack voor Nosferatu (W F Murnau)
2000 – Noorderslag Festival, Lowlands Festival, VPRO Club Lek, Studio Brussel
2001 – New York, UK tour, Paradiso
2003 – SXSW, CMJ, USA tours, UK tour, Melkweg
2004 – The Ex Convoi Tour, Germany, Denmark, France, UK tours
2005 – Moers Festival, Canada tour, Russia tour
et cetera.
Projects
1999 – live soundtrack bij de film Nosferatu (W F Murnau, 1927) onder andere in het Stedelijk Museum
2001 – VPRO 3voor12 – Op Weg Naar Stadskanaal, een documentaire waarin Zea een jaar lang wordt gevolgd
2007 – Zea & Soli Brass, compositie en optreden met de Friese brassband Soli Brass op het Freeze Festival
2008 – Optredens en workshops in Ethiopië als onderdeel van een muzikaal uitwisselingsprogramma van The Ex
2012 – bouw van een studio in Oyarifa, Accra, Ghana
2012 – 2019 Optredens, uitwisseling en samenwerking met King Ayisoba in Ghana en Europa
2017 – Zea & Kosten Koper vs Drumband Hallelujah Makkum voor de opening van Welcome to the Village 2017
2018 – Deelname documentaire In de Armen van Morpheus; geluidsonderzoek Exploding Head Syndrome
2019 – Locatie productie Bongo Bar programmering akoestisch project van drie dagen op Welcome to the Village
2020 – Portretten in Poëzie; optekenen van verhalen van oude Friezen in poëzie, muziek en beeld
2020 – MINIMAL GUITAR; loop, beeld, schrijf en opname project langs de Ring A10, Amsterdam
2021 – SONGLINES; loop, beeld, schrijf en opname project in Wageningen
Awards and Prize
1998 – tweede prijs Kleine Prijs van Sneek
1999 – tweede prijs Popprijs van Amsterdam
2003 – Stimuleringsprijs Gemeente Amsterdam
2009 – Gouden Kalf; speciale juryprijs voor muziek productie van de film Kan Door Huid Heen
2017 – Bernlefprijs voor Friestalige album “Moarn gean ik dea”
2018 – Roskilde Festival Charity Foundation Support voor Makkum Records internationale samenwerking
Award motivation
Ostana Best Musical Composition 2024 Prize is awarded to Arnold De Boer, aka Zea, for his use of his native language, Frisian, as a form of music declined in a thoughtful, historically sensitive, intelligent, and communicative manner.
Arnold De Boer has a prolific career as musician and singer; in the past two 20 years he has performed in more than forty countries on six continents, and it’s remarkable that wherever he goes, he sings mostly in Frisian.
Because of his artistic, linguistic, and cultural activism, he founded a record label through which he promotes his own work of spreading Frisian but also music and languages from around the world.
In the spirit that distinguishes linguistic minorities and minorities in general Arnold De Boer does not belong and is not interested in the mainstream scene but moves within an international network with which he promotes collaborations, exchanges, comparisons, knowledge, awareness.
Arnold De Boer is a musician, a poet, a traveler, who engages with other cultures within a process of osmosis not too far removed from troubadour making and its ethical, civic, and political themes.
Recognition is also given to him for knowing how to be transversal, for his praise of multilingualism and respect, for his awareness that each language expresses something unique and that this uniqueness, within the multitude, must be preserved, innovated, vitalized, and that words are meaningful.
He’s being prized for his ability to communicate to multiple generations and multiple cultural and social communities, to make music out of thought and to be a carrier of messages through the sound of his mother tongue.
Arnold De Boer, a.k.a. Zea, sees language as a source of uncertainty and pluriformity, as an antidote to absolutism and dogmatism; language as a form of music that works against rigid brains, and also for this a well-deserved recognition.
PARTNERS
The Ostana Prize celebrates the international support received
from the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and from two reference institutions in the linguistic field: the ELEN network (European Language Equality Network) and the NPLD network (Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity).