As a child Bea imagined her future as a performer for Cirque Du Soleil: “I was obsessed with the circus as a kid. As soon as I was old enough, I went to classes for it, and it became quite a serious plan at some point. From seven until I was fourteen, I studied acrobatics, mostly aerial, full time.” As soon as she went to high school, her focus shifted as peers in school often started commenting on Bea being a good singer: “When I became conscious of this skill I apparently had, I started using it more to express myself, and started singing in a band and making music. When I got my first laptop at 16 I started playing around with GarageBand a lot. It wasn’t even songs I was making, more collages of sound, I would sing over instrumentals from bands or composers I liked; stuff by Philip Glass, Aphex Twin, or Massive Attack, which were my first discoveries into a bit more alternative music. I would record my own voice over those, just by singing into my laptop.” Looking back, even while still performing acrobatics, music had already played a key role in Bea’s early life: “These really epic sounds from the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack for me strongly connected to that feeling of dangling in the air, performing, and trying to show people something magical. I actually think that my rooting-in and concept of music started there, in quite a playful world where I was hanging in the air and moving to music all the time.”
After high school Bea started hanging out with producers and DJs around Amsterdam, occasionally doing vocals for different artists. “At some point a German producer heard my voice somewhere, and got me to Berlin to record vocals. When I realized that someone would pay for me to go to Berlin, that was the first moment I considered music as a career for myself. It took me a while before I fully committed to the idea of it. I tried a lot of different things before that, like getting into Amsterdam’s main art academy Rietveld. When I got rejected from the Rietveld Academy for the fourth time, something shifted; I went travelling for a year, came back when I was 22, and then started writing a lot of songs. That’s where my devoted journey to music and releasing music started.”
However fully committing to one medium turned out not to be what she wanted. “For a while I tried to present pure-consistency with that one path I chose. I considered that to be true discipline, but I’m just not that person. It blows my mind that we as evolved humans have developed tools to communicate our inner worlds. I love using every single one of those tools, without limitation. When I realized art school was just not happening for me, there was a turning point for where I decided I should experiment with whatever I wanted. To share it, fail publicly, and learn how to deal with hating something I made afterwards. I made a lot of silly things, but who cares?”
Thus, Bea granted herself the freedom to fully explore the other things she liked to do; making pictures, painting, creating clothes for herself, her friends, and her mom, giving feedback, or participating in the creative processes of others. At times the autodidactic Bea felt she was lacking in technical knowledge, limiting her abilities to realize bigger ideas. Simultaneously, not being as aware of mistakes and problems that could occur has given her a deeper experience of creative freedom. “There are a lot of things a trained photographer or musician can do that I can’t, but I’m really good at being in between all those things and perceiving every angle of every field I delve into. I make something that I feel needs to exist, finish it, and share it. It’s a journey of accepting the complex diversities that live within me, but also the wide interests that continuously cross-contaminate. Diversity in what you do isn’t encouraged at all, even though a lot of people do it or would like to. We all get into trouble for not knowing how to define or label ourselves. I have spent a lot of time finding a term that really describes me or my way of working, and keep on changing it. I guess my protean process and my fluid communication of it is, in itself, the body of work. As if it’s an animal that I feed.”
Encouraging others to embrace “all crafts that communicate their inner world” and find the same confidence to share what they make is the main message Bea hopes people take away from her own output. “I appreciate people looking at my photographs and listening to my music, but ideally the moment of them observing my work triggers a new moment: where someone feels liberated to explore the same creative freedom, and for them to give themselves that same permission I gave myself. I’m sure we all have a lot more inside of us to express, myself included. More and more, I see my role in the world as one where I help other people commit to engaging deeply with their inner world more than anything. Whether that’s through one–on–one consultation or through sharing my own work.” The relatability Bea tries to bring across in her work shines through in the way she presents herself. Her Instagram shows Bea in endless different forms; sweaty, floating naked in the ocean, deeply focused while working, and with her huge infectious smile. BEA1991 music videos are never overly glam, and if so, it seems to be more as a form of satire of pop stardom than to ever create a perfect image of herself. Never creating something unattainable, and not that different from the Bea I know in real life.
Besides, in an industry that is always on the hunt for fresh “young talent,” and a society that is obsessed with women (not) ageing, it is an interesting choice to have a birth year in an alias. “The birth year was a conscious choice. I did think about the fact that if I’m 38 and want to look 30, people will know my real age, but with that it becomes a pledge to the work that is my life. BEA1991 reminded me of both an email address as well as a more sci-fi futuristic persona. It could have been cool for only 2 years, but then I thought about it again and realized it was what I wanted because it is who I am. I want a full life in which people understand that fullness is a choice I made, and my name and birthdate are the only constant things about me. Of course, I had my moments where the name annoyed me or I thought about getting something else. Everyone with an alias probably goes through that. The name already survived quite a bit of turmoil, and at this point I’m aware that there’s even a fanbase to it. This has given the name extra power for me because it makes me want to be more consistent for those following BEA1991.”
Ten years later BEA1991 is still consistently running. With a discography consisting of two albums Brand New Adult [2019] and Songs of 2K11 [2015], two EPs, and a couple more singles including “Submit to Love” released in January 2023 or her newest, “SCREAKER!”, released in February this year. All of which Bea released through her own label BE.AWORLD. As discussions around the issue of ownership in the music industry have been widespread over the past few years, owning all of her own releases appears ahead of her time. However, the release of “Submit to Love”, seemed to be the first time that Bea clearly emphasized the fact that her music is self-released. “I felt like I had to be more vocal about it so people would understand how much work I put into it. I find myself not wanting to create this martyr story around BEA1991, or forcing credibility to my name by emphasising my independence from the bigger music industry and its aggressive structures. At the same time, I feel like that facet of my story being lost on the vast world of the internet, might be a major shame. So, context is often everything.”
In addition to having all ownership over her own work, self-releasing also means that it’s Bea who decides which of her songs will be released and when her work is finished. “Like with that last track, I just kicked it out the door, and just left it to the world to make it travel or give it a life. It travelled a lot, and it could have equally not been that way. To see that happen, makes me feel so grateful and excited. The infrastructure we currently have for listening to music is super powerful. It doesn’t work in my favour in a lucrative way, but it does favour the reach of my music. With this last release the realness of statistics has become a lot clearer; it used to be quite an abstract world to me, and now I truly see that the numbers are people that are listening to my music while living their daily life.”
Somewhat caught in between the dilemma of hating and loving streaming platforms, Bea comments: “I feel like I’m currently halfway in a process where I have accepted that I have to find other ways to make a living if that means my career in music has more freedom. I would never want to feel pressure to make music that is commercial, if anything I’d do it for jokes one day on my own accord. If we lived in a world where money wasn’t at the core of every endeavour, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, but it has been decided for me that I need money to do the things I want in life. Having to make and wanting to make money was something I had to accept; maybe music in the end isn’t what will build my house or pay for my pasta. Of course, it’s fucked up that out there somewhere, some douchebag CEO is driving around in shiny cars that I and other underpaid artists bought them. Meanwhile I’m making music that is making people happy, adding depth and meaning to little moments in their day, and there’s nothing more beautiful to me than going through life knowing that, and living in that connection. Call it loser wins.”
Similarly, Bea sees both sides to having a big label back you up as an artist: “When I first started releasing music, I felt like if a label wanted to reach out, it would happen. Of course it helps with reaching an audience and media coverage, or with financing bigger videoclips and campaigns. In the end I guess it is quite ironic for a pop-satire artist that it never happened. It influences the way in which the music reaches others as well; not through ads or billboards, but through direct interpersonal sharing, or a spontaneous discovery beyond the algorithm. I do feel like people appreciate that there’s no middle man between me and them, and it definitely adds to the overall story of the project as well. It’s from my head straight to the listeners. Still, when I see other artists in similar musical categories that started out releasing around the same time as me, and have become huge names now with massive world tours and juicy campaigns, I find myself fighting a nasty inner voice that bullies me for lacking in that area. At the same time, I’m actually relieved that I don’t have that career, that I’m not caught in the big squeaking wheel. Besides, there are certain social and cultural privileges that come with not embodying, and sustaining, a big artist name. I probably intuitively valued those privileges over other forms of success. That doesn’t mean I’m still looking for my ultimate form of success, and constantly making decisions to slowly realize it. Meanwhile, I get to fuck off and live on a beach and walk around naked all day if I want to, make time to get my motorbike license and be in the dirt, and build myself a house with my own hands. If I was famous or well known, or had a massive image to uphold, that kind of life would probably be out the window. At least the public feedback on every one of those decisions would be bigger. More and more, I’m investing in my spirituality in ways that are changing me at the core. It’s changing how I see the world, and how I want to share what I do. I have time for it. The more I trust that growth, and the more I completely let go of all my expectations, the more charm the hardships of my career emanate, and the more they make sense in relation to who I am.”
