In his rap about the hip electric bicycles that are also rapidly advancing inNoord, Massih Hutak (30) processed a sample of the penetrating alarm signalfrom a VanMoof. In a video clip, ‘selfie experience’ Wondr is defaced. As inhis columns in this newspaper, he opposes the gentrification of his beloveddistrict.
He affectionately calls the neighborhood where he grew up PVG, also on therecord that he presents on Wednesday in the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ. Close tothe rental flat in Plan Van Gool, where his family who fled from Afghanistanended up around the turn of the century, he points to the wing of theBuikslotermeerplein shopping center that was added in 2009. “Suddenly we had aKFC and a MediaMarkt opposite our house. That was something! ‘The neighborhoodis doing well, isn’t it,’ I said to my father.”
His father responded with a lesson that has always stuck with him: “He said,’Oh yes? Who is that good for then?’ On the other hand, we lived in poorlyinsulated houses, the rent went up and fire safety had deteriorated.” At thesame time, Hutak learned from the movie Boyz n the Hood the concept ofgentrification. “That’s when I started to become aware of what was going on.”
Research method
He uses his record and the video clips he made with it as a research method.“Brooklyn, Berlin. Buikslotermeerplein,” he sings in the song DesignerBicycle. He sees the same mechanism occurring all over the world: neglectedneighborhoods become popular with a new, affluent public that makes theneighborhood more prosperous, but also more expensive, too expensive for theoriginal inhabitants.
“The differences are getting bigger because many houses have been sold,” hesays in Noord. “In neighborhoods where there was a great sense of community.Everyone was in the same shit.”
Readers of The parole will mainly know him from his columns, but it is themusic that started it all for him. He then went to the theatre, wrote a bookand until mid-January, an exhibition of Verdedig Noord, the residents’movement of which Hutak is the face, can be seen in the Amsterdam Museum untilmid-January.
He often comes across as stern in his columns, he concludes. “In my music Idare to take the space to be myself even more.” The songs are mostly cheerfuland light-hearted. “It is a fine seducer. I introduce people to an ugly wordlike gentrification in a very accessible way. Hip-hop is a candy with amedicine in it.”
Declaration of love
It took a while before his first album was released. Since 2019, single songsand video clips have been online every now and then. The self-produced clips,just like the music, complete the declaration of love to Noord. “It is typicalof hip-hop to sing about the city in such a specific way. You make it hyper-personal and hyper-local and therefore universal,” says Hutak. “Even before hementioned Brooklyn or New York, Jay-Z was talking about Marcy Projects. Thatwas his Plan Van Gool.”
North is colored on it. “It is not a set piece as in many films and seriesthat come to film here. It’s a character in itself, as in Baltimore The Wire_it.” With his own perspective here too: in _Slippers Ray-Ban a girl danceshappily everywhere in Noord, but not in three places. “There she looks seriousand takes off her sunglasses. Then she stands at self-build plots. That is nocoincidence.”
Uterus
The fear that North will slip through his fingers is actually quiteunderstandable. “I fled at a young age, through different countries, throughdifferent azc’s. I didn’t know any better than that we went somewhere elseevery three months and that’s why I didn’t dare to get attached to friends orneighbors. In Amsterdam we went from Osdorp to Noord and it was only therethat I felt safe for the first time. Here I was looked after, I feltprotected. That made it a home for me.”
Does the fear of gentrification go to Hutak’s throat like no other because hehas already lost his home? “It is the nail on the head, but now it is gettingvery personal. I lost my mother at a young age. I did talk about that withRené Gude, the philosopher who was then a thinker of the nation. He said: Themoment they are taken away from their mothers, people look for conditionsclosest to the womb. He said: ‘North is your womb’.”
“That safety, that sense of security, that warmth has become North for me. I’mnot going to be motherless again. I will defend, protect, guard that with allmy life.”
The presentation of Welcome to the Northside is Wednesday evening inMuziekgebouw aan het IJ. The album can be listened to on all streamingplatforms from Friday.