We are excited to announce our second Ambassador on the ARMC program for 2022 – Dieuwertje Heuvelings who will be traveling from The Netherlands to South Africa to join us at Africa Rising Music Conference, along with her peers from the Dutch Music Export. Welcome on board!
Dieuwertje is a music professional, teacher, writer and Podcast host. She has worked as an interviewer, a Spotify playlist editor, an A&R at Artista Records in New York and as a Music Supervisor for TV Shows and commercials. Furthermore, she has recently published her debut novel.
She has taken over our ARMC Playlist on Spotify, and gave us an interview in preparation for the Conference. We hope you enjoy it!
Q: Why are you so passionate about pushing the female voice through your work?
A: Currently, only 20% of artists on the charts is a woman, for centuries and still to this day women were held back in expressing their creativity in a free and safe way. We hope to turn the tide by amplifying female voices in the creators community as well as the music industry, so the future will be fair and safe for all of us.
Q: Why do you think an event like ARMC is important for the African / EU market as a whole?
A: Both continents are shifting away from their extreme focus on American artists and have been celebrating their local creators. In the EU a lot of these local artists are African diaspora and therefore introduced a whole new sound, this sound has become one of the most populair sounds on the continent which made people listen to more artists from countries like Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. ARMC gives the music industry the opportunity to meet up and broaden their chances in each other’s markets.
Q: According to you, what influence does African music have on the rest of the world currently?
A: I don’t think there is another continent that had more influence on contemporary culture as Africa, in art in general but especially in music.
Stay tuned and don’t miss our next Ambassadors! We will be announcing them here, and in our Instagram account. For further information, do not hesitate to join our Newsletter.