Arnold De Boer has a fruitful career as musician and singer. Over the last twenty years, he has performed in more than 40 countries across 6 continents. Even more striking—wherever he goes, he sings in Frisian. Based on his artistic, linguistic, and cultural activism, he created a record label through which he is able to promote the spread of Frisian and his work, along with music and language, over the entire world. In a scene that likes to distinguish linguistic minorities from minorities in general, Arnold de Boer does not belong to and is not interested in the mainstream, but moves within an international network with which he promotes collaborations, exchanges, comparisons, knowledge and awareness.
He is a musician, a poet, and a traveler. He compares himself with other cultures through a process of osmosis, not unlike the troubadours of the past, and addresses ethical, civil, and political themes. He is also recognized for the fact that he knows how to be transversal, for his praise for multilingualism, for respect, for the realization that every language expresses something unique—and that this uniqueness, within the multitude, must be preserved, renewed and (re-)vitalized. He is rewarded for his ability to communicate across generation gaps and across multiple cultural and social boundaries, to translate thoughts into music and to convey his message through the sound of his mother tongue. Arnold de Boer (aka Zea) sees language as a source of uncertainty and plurality, as an antidote to absolutism and dogmatism. For him, language is a form of music that works against rigid brains and deserves recognition for that feature.
At Explore the North 2023, he performed together with Scottish musician and singer Quinie, as the finale of a residency that Explore the North produced in cooperation with Popfabryk.