Netherlands Flanders in Alaska
March 26, 2016
Episode 43:
Sebu and Karma, “Puur”
[Producer’s Note: this week’s episode was originally set to air later in the Spring Semester, but in light of the tragic events that unfolded this past week in Belgium, we felt it was appropropriate to air this episode to highlight the lively culture in Belgium; Belgium is much more than these attacks, and the airing of this episode was intended to show solidarity with the Belgian people and to give Alaskan audiences a more complete image of life in the country.]
Besides the Netherlands, some for of Dutch is spoken in several other places; Aruba, Bon Aire, Curaçao, Suriname, and of course Belgium. Belgium is split into three linguistic regions, with the Dutch-Speaking Flanders in the North, French Speaking Wallonia in the South, a smaller German region in the far east of the country, and Brussels- the officially bilingual capital in the middle.
While the issues of creating a common national identity amongst linguistically diverse peoples within Belgium is fairly-well known, fewer people outside of this small slice of Europe know about the relationship between Flanders and the Netherlands, two countries divided by a ‘some-what common language.’
In the U.S. we generally have positive things we associate the two countries with: The Netherlands is at once a progressive pioneer of cannabis laws, sex-workers’s rights and marriage equality, and a tradition steeped land of tulips, canals, and masters of the painted canvas; Belgium is the land that blessed us with waffles, fried potatoes, diverse libations, and Brussel sprouts.
When viewing each other, less positive images come to mind. The Dutch often see the Flemish as a little brother of sorts, less populated, less politically and economically influential, and perhaps a bit culturally and linguistically backwards; their own image of the Flemish, much like that of Flanders co-countrymen is derived from the days when Flanders was much more agrarian, when mussel harvesting was a bigger part of the economy, and before Antwerp emerged as a major global port and processor of uncut diamonds. This image has been inaccurate for at least 150 years, but the image lives on.
The Flemish are usually no less flattering in their view of the Dutch: a monolithically tall, nasally speaking, greedy, and misguidedly arrogant bunch. When I once dared to call out a Flemish friend for painting in broad brush strokes she gave what she viewed as concrete proof of this stereotype:
“A dutch guy came over with a friend of mine, I asked if anyone wanted coffee, out of politeness you know, and the guy said ‘yes, sure, I’d love a coffee!’.....can you believe that? I didn’t know him, so rude and arrogant.”
However, besides a few misunderstandings here and there, and a good bit of humor shared over superficial differences the Dutch and Flemish are intwined culturally, economically, and politically in a multitude of ways. As members of NATO and the EU the two are economically, politically, and militarily connected, no border separates the two. The two neighbors have a common agency, which audits and verifies accreditation for post-secondary education. On a much larger scale the border is crossed daily by shoppers, commuters, and students. One could even say the region of Noord Brabant, which hugs the Flemish border, has more in common with its neighbors to the south than to the non-Catholic countrymen in the Randstad area; similarly the Limburg region of Belgium has more connection economically and culturally to the neighboring Dutch city of Maastricht, than to the relatively ‘distant’ port of Antwerp.
So just how much does these neighbors share in terms of hiphop culture?
Unfortunately it has seemed to be a largely 1-way street; Dutch artists regularly tour into Belgium, and Dutch hiphop regularly gets play on the airwaves of Flanders, but less often the other way around. A lot of this has to do with the larger population of the Netherlands (16 million compared to Flanders paltry 6.4 million); because the Netherlands produces more music, more books, and more films than Flanders, the Netherlands dialect of Dutch is more widely understood by Flemish-dialect speakers than the other way around.
Besides the early 90′s pioneers ‘t Hof van Commerce, most Belgian hiphop has made its way to the Netherlands in the last few years, partially influenced by self promotion through social media. Most notable have been the Gent based duo Safi en Spreej, and self-described hiphop troubador Tourist Lemc, all signed to Netherlands based Top Notch records.
Today’s featured artists are a duo known as Seba en Karma, two young Antwerp based MC’s who met in a DIY recording studio in 2011, and ran paralell in the city’s hiphop scene, eventually putting together 2015′s “Puur” (Engl: Pure) the product of- according to their bandcamp page, “Years of procrastination and a single productive weekend in the Dutch province of Zeeland.”
The initial quality of the music that caught my attention was the inescapable nature of their Antwerp dialect; it was ever-present without seeming like it was being channeled as a novelty. The thing that kept me listening to their album on repeat was their complimentary ranges and styles, one slightly higher and nasally and the other’s lower and raspier, perhaps betraying the two baby-faced Flanders true age; for me it is personally a winning formula, much like the combination of Mike D and MCA or Phife Dawg and Q-Tip. Finally it was the visuals of their music video for “Het Gaat U Goed”, which they filmed walking backwards through the streets of Antwerp, then played forward, a sort of surreal, zero-fun homage to the famous video Drop by Pharcyde.
We hope you enjoyed this brief peak into the Dutch-speaking hiphop scene of Belgium.
Tracklist:
Deadline
Kracht van Muziek 2
Tijd
Droom
Kring Klein
Nattigheid
Mental Rust (ft. Froze and DJ 2 Ez)
Puur (ft. Stef)
Het Gaat U Goed[