For our third meetup, Katja and I decided to keep it simple- we spent time listening to and exchanging music from each other’s languages. We showed songs ranging from old, classic hits to new, modern music in three languages; Dutch, German, and Papiamentu (one of my native languages).
A big artists of The Netherlands is André Hazes, who was known as a ‘levenslied’ singer (sang about the dark side of life, with simple yet emotional lyrics). I showed her the songs “Het laatste rondje” and “Bloed, zweet, en tranen”, which are my favourite songs of André. For this generational period, Katja showed me Udo Jürgens, an Austrian composer whose career spanned over 50 years. Two songs she showed me where “Griechischer Wein” and “Ich war noch niemals in New York”, which were both songs regarding sorrow and the desire to be free/home. The songs we showed each other that are considered “old hits” are still played and know till this day, and are similar in tunes and themes.
Just for Katja to get a sense of my two cultures, I also showed her a song called “Plegaria” by Oswin Behilia, a soft song acting as a prayer to God and the collective to ask for strength, capability, and social progress.
For the modern songs, I showed Katja two popular Dutch boy bands. “Broederliefde” was and still is an insanely popular band, and growing up, I listened to all of their songs. I also wanted to show Katja the band as these guys have Curacao/Surinaams/Cabo Verde roots, which feels closer to my true identity than the Dutch culture. Another band I showed her was B Brave, which almost every Dutch girl had a crush on back in the day (including me).
Katja showed me a really fun song called Hauseparty by RIAN, which is relatively new, yet very popular and funny music. And a classic that she listens to is Wackelkontakt by Oimara, kind of an apres-ski song. Its a very upbeat and fun song, that I remember she showed me before on the hike 🙂
Bella Napoli (by Roy Bianco & Die Abbrunzati Boys) is also a very popular song made by an Italo-Schlager band. Its kind of italo-pop romance but in German. She also showed me her personal videos of the Schlacher Strudel, which kind of resembles a moshpit where people run and dance in circles on this song.
It was a very nice hangout, and really cool to see and translate the songs. I was able to read quite a bit of German, as some words were similar to Dutch (both in written form and pronounciation). At the end, Katja also showed me her top 1 Spotify song from Marina that I cannot share the name of :p
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