Martha Da'ro on LGBTQ+ in hip-hop: "We need realmodels"

February 18, 2020

min read

Queer and gay people are more than ever claiming their rightful place in all levels of society. This growing presence and visibility also shows itself in the urban music scene.

Internationally, trailblazers like Mykki Blanco and Frank Ocean are paving a path toward more normalization of the LGBTQ+ community in a genre that has not always been friendly to them. In this series, we outline the situation in Belgium through personal portraits of gay and queer people moving - each in their own way - in the Belgian hip-hop scene. Today: Martha Da'ro.

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By Pieter D'Hooghe and Yannick Deleebeeck, photos by Damon De Backer. This project was made possible in part by the support of the Flemish Journalism Fund.

© Damon De Backer

With a name that guarantees success, Martha Da' ro seems to have become incontournable in the artistic world in recent years. She timed her way to the Belgian top with the Mechelen hip-hop collective Soul'Art, even managing to cash in on a record deal with Top Notch.

She then debuted on the big screen in 'Black,' the film by brand-new Hollywood talents Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, after which it was time to put Soul'Art on hold and throw herself into her own solo musical project. 'Cheap Wine & Paris,' is how her debut EP will be called.

After wanderings that have led her from Mons over Ghent to Brussels, Martha seems ready to make an international furor. Meanwhile, she also started 'Visual Poetry' with her partner Yaqine Hamzaoui. Together they produced, among other things, the 'Sugarman' music video.

She can be found both on screen and on stage; one could safely describe Martha as a cultural glutton. Someone who does not want to limit herself to only one aspect but just gets inspiration and satisfaction from a broader artistic profile: "As a person, it's Martha, Da'ro is my stage name. I act, make music, write, direct and listen. Just because I'm so busy with different things, I quickly feel the need for something new and don't want to limit myself. Sometimes I can express myself better in visual things than in music, when I can't find the words for it, for example. But when I do something myself, it's just unfiltered Martha." That pure form is her best form, doomed to break pots.

Experimenting with anger

Meanwhile, Martha starred in "Over Water" - the acclaimed fiction series by Tom Lenaerts and Paul Baeten Gronda - on Eén and took ample time to sculpt her new EP. In her own words, artists who draw inspiration from a broad framework are the most interesting. You can hardly prove her wrong: Tom Barman, David Byrne and Childish Gambino also share that thought. "In that, hip-hop is a very interesting genre, because you can literally mix it with anything. That's also what I'm trying to do now with my new music. I started looking in the direction of kuduro - energetic, danceable music from Angola that always starts from the urge to innovate. It's something you also feel with hip-hop because there are always new sounds that are hip."

© Damon De Backer

"I let myself be influenced by everything that comes my way. So I'm not afraid that people won't recognize my music anymore, because as a person - and as an artist - you evolve. You do remain forever true to a kind of inner child, your innate character." Born in Mons, raised in Mechelen, then moved to Ghent and now in Brussels. Even that nomadic existence has constantly changed Martha's artistic direction: "For me, Mechelen was the absolute starting point, it seemed like I gave the maximum there. Then in Ghent, it seemed to go a few steps further. And today in Brussels, I'm building the next phase."

"So far in my musical work, I have mostly spoken from my peaceful, broken side. I'm incredibly curious to put anger into my newest work as well. That's new to me, so there will be some experimentation involved. I recently showed my new work to the other Soul'Art members and they were quite shocked. My style has changed a lot from what I was doing with them. I am very satisfied that I can express my anger and lack of understanding through my artistic work. In a nine-to-five you don't always have the space to transform your incomprehension. In that respect, with my music I create a kind of free state, a fantasy world where people can connect and identify."

Unconscious discrimination

Channeling that anger has quietly become a standard in hip-hop. The genre has functioned as a mouthpiece to express anger and incomprehension since the 1970s. Twenty years ago, Eminem also forced an indictment on what he found difficult to digest. In May 2000, Eminem's third studio album, "The Marshall Mathers LP," was released. On the record's track list we find "Criminal," a song with controversial, homophobic rhymes:

My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge / That'll stab you in the head, whether you're a fag or les' / Or a homosex, hermaph or a trans-a-vest / Pants or dress, hate fags? / The answer's yes / Homophobic? Nah, you're just heterophobic.

"Artists who hate for the sake of hating, I just don't listen to that. The things that are sung about in hip-hop textually haven't really kept me from finding access to an almost exclusively male world. In my opinion, there is rather an unconscious discrimination because - historically - not many female rappers could offer headwinds to machismo. With Soul'Art, for example, I was hardly greeted but rather received as a groupie. Then I went on stage trying doubly hard to prove myself. Such occurrences fiercely motivated me to fight for my spot."

"My friend, Yaqine Hamzaoui, is a photographer and often comes to my concerts. In that private context, I'm so much more at ease than when I'm on the street, for example. So for me, within hip-hop there is a feeling that I can be myself and that artistic bubble is a kind of free state. If I want to kiss her, I just do. It seems obvious that the person you love wants to shake your hand but on the street I sometimes have to think twice about it. People look weird or suddenly behave uncomfortably. In the beginning, this brought a lot of confusion and I preferred to avoid such a situation rather than confront it. I've never really felt discriminated against because of my orientation but I'm not going to deny that it exists either. I know plenty of people who have been scolded on the street because of their sexual orientation."

The importance of realmodels

In the mid-1990s, "gay hop" emerged, a genre formed in the wings with sexual orientation as shared ground. In the early 2010s, that community took more shape with a new wave of artists. Frank Ocean, Brockhampton and Mykki Blanco, among others, came out openly as gay/queer. "On the one hand, you have artists like Tyler The Creator who put their orientation in a gray zone. If he creates doubt with that, it means he doesn't care. On the other hand, however, you need people who very consciously claim that role model status. In the case of Frank Ocean, I don't think he sees himself as a role model per se, but rather that he finds a kind of self-acceptance in his work. He sends out a message by which he wants to show that you either take the whole package or you take nothing."

"There is also a certain danger in being a role model. A role model basically follows a few prescribed rules, including perfection. Then you almost give the message that everyone has to be perfect. Little Simz said in an interview that she doesn't want to be a role model, but rather a realmodel. I totally understand that; you can be very explicit but there is still room to make mistakes. Actually, that whole "being perfect" thing is the death knell for role models. It gives the wrong image to the outside world and everyone who looks up to you. Then you do more harm than good with that leading role."

Remarkably, the conversation around the place of LGBTQ+ in the urban scene in Belgium is hardly ever held. Are we so progressive that we are ahead of the debate? "I think that just hasn't been addressed yet. If it's not talked about, people aren't going to feel like sharing it either. I do think you can start with music as a medium to express yourself. It's a form of communication where you have a big platform and you can bring change with it. The unfortunate thing is that you get boxed in rather quickly. Being LGBTQ+ can so overshadow the music. Once we get a few steps further and there's more normalization, the music is just going to take precedence over orientation again. Because let's be honest: if you make good music, you're a good artist, regardless of anything."

Follow Martha on Instagram via @martha.daro and @visualpoetryofficial. Her EP 'Cheap Wine & Paris' will be released later this year.

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