Zines and Sounds: A DIY Space for Creatives, Art-Enjoyers, and Revolutionaries
Interview on April 6, 2025, with Bahati Mubuuke from Hothead Radio, Co-founder of Amsterdam-based zine shop “Zines and Sounds.”
As I biked along van Woustraat, I knew I was in the right place by the gathered crowd of young creatives and alt people smoking, drinking, and chatting outside. Walking into Zines and Sounds, my first impression was that it was much smaller than I expected, in the best possible way. The space had nothing to hide and felt easily approachable. It reminded me of being a kid, when I would find the tiniest corners to read in, tucked away from the world. And I understood why everyone was gathered outside in a good mood – 10 people in the shop already made it feel like a party.
There was a great playlist bumping in the background, and I had to refrain from Shazaming each new song. The zines – stars of the show – were displayed on shelves around the shop's perimeter. There was a wide selection to browse, but it was displayed so that the individual zines were visible, highlighting the colorful and diverse curation.
I snagged Bahati, my friend and one of the shop's founders, for a hug and a chat. He looked overwhelmed with genuine happiness and excitement. I couldn’t have been more glad to be there and share in such a special moment with him. We spoke about the interplay of music and physical/visual media, and how this dynamic is at the core of Zines and Sounds. Creativity has many different manifestations, and for Bahati, you can’t separate music from the visuals created to go along with it, be it the corresponding music video or album cover art.
We got happily interrupted because an artist came in with a sample copy of his first-ever zine, asking if he could potentially sell it in the store. He told Bahati that he was recommended to Zines and Sounds by a friend after struggling to sell his zine elsewhere. “That’s what we’re here for, man,” was Bahati’s enthusiastic response.
What's your name and relation to Zines and Sounds?
My name is Bahati Mubuuke. My relationship with Zines and Sounds is that I am a co-founder with three other friends: Benjamin Combee, Duco Bossert, and Chano Exposito-Jerez
How would you describe the space in your own words?
I would describe the space as an amalgamation of all of our interests when it comes to visual arts, literature, music. Also, exploring a different avenue of self-expression where you can curate what you like and invite other people into the space, and have them also contribute to what you have going on. A symbiotic relationship between those who consume, and we who have the product, but also giving the artists influence in what goes on in the space with their work.
You describe it as a symbiotic relationship between consumer, which I think is interesting because a “symbiotic” relationship gives me a positive connotation that contrasts with the typical mass producer/consumer dynamic. But maybe that's because we’re talking about art, you know? It can be a beautiful exchange of energy and not solely a transactional dynamic.
Exactly. Yeah. Because we do get people into the shop who want to contribute, and we want them to contribute. I feel like one of the goals of having a space like this is for it to not only provide artists with just a space, but also a place where you can actually build some kind of community, even though…community is a vague word, I know. But essentially, you can meet people who like the same stuff and gain confidence in your work as well. We have artists who are having their stuff sold for the first time anywhere. I reckon it feels nice if you're making something and people actually love it. It makes creating easier, I guess. Then again, you want to challenge yourself with what you're creating, but being in a community space might give you that confidence to do so. So I think it's a net positive from that perspective.
So this space was conceptualized and created with your collective, which is Hothead Radio, right? Can you give some context about what Hothead does more generally and when it was formed?
So, yeah, the idea goes back to high school. Initially, it was Ben and Duco, the other co-founders. You have to do this school project at the end of your school, I guess, year six, year five. If you're doing something in the arts, basically. So Ben and Duco made clothes for this project. They made a couple of shirts, they made a hoodie with a picture of me printed onto the hoodie. Then we had this pop-up, and it was this amazing thing where so many people came to buy shirts and just listen to music. So that's how it started. I don't even remember what the name was before because Hothead came a lot later. And from there, we thought to ourselves, let's try to think of something like the pop-up and the clothes, and see what we can make of it. From there, we tried to make stuff that didn't really work as well as we would have wanted it to. Because let's be honest, most 17- 16-year-olds were making clothes when I was in high school. Everyone was doing that. There wasn't necessarily a uniqueness to what we were doing. But we had this love for wanting to create in general. Duco was already making music. I was DJing before I joined Hothead, when I first came to our high school. I was taking DJing lessons, listening to a lot of music. That's how we bonded with each other, the music and the fashion.
Progressively, as the years went by, we developed different tastes. These tastes led us to a point where we wanted to host events. If we found out about sick artists, and thought it would be nice if we saw them in Amsterdam. Or if we curated a night or something. The target audience was mostly people who like music that we do, because there wasn't a platform for mostly hip hop and R&B and soul music in the city. The Amsterdam underground is really mostly punk music or techno. So, yeah, that’s it basically… otherwise this is going to be a long-winded story because there's so much.
Yeah, so much lore.
There's so much lore, you know. The pandemic came, and then I wasn't in Hothead anymore because I was like in school, depression. Too much mental illness, you know, I was like, you know what guys? I can't do this right now. I was living in Diemen and we had the office in Noord. I used to go there every now and then, but it was just too much, even though it was so much fun just to be around. But then in 2022, 2023, I was coming out of my shell again. And I was like, okay, let me get more involved with the project.
So, 2022, 2023.. and by that point, it was Hothead Radio, the name was already there?
Yeah. Even in the pandemic, it was Hothead Radio. It was mostly Duco who had the idea to do radio. I think Chano was listening to a Skepta song, and Skepta said something along the lines of “hothead something.” And then Chano was like, ‘yeah, that's that's what we should call it.’
While we're still on Hothead, I want to bring attention to your logo, which is the top of a face/head, you know, with the eyes. It's painted on the wall of Zines and Sounds, and when I went to the opening, I felt immediately drawn to it. When I walked into the shop, I wanted to know: what's the story, who's the artist?
Man, to be honest with you, most of these things are really random. We had basically finished the shop. And Ben came up with the idea of adding something to the wall. Asking if I should put my collages up there, or if we should get a painting, just bouncing ideas. Ben was just looking up stuff on the internet for inspiration. And he ended up finding that image and was like, ‘okay, let's use this.’ He projected it onto the wall, and he and Tate traced over it. That's basically how the image came. Because when you're outside, you can see the eyes. The idea was that the eyes would pull you in.
We also don't really have a logo. We change it up depending on what we're trying to communicate. It is nicer to have a recognizable thing, but it's also nice to explore different types of logos and ideas. We don't have to have this base structure. It’s hard to put all the stuff that Hothead does into one single thing. At least up until now.
I feel like that makes a lot of sense for this space because it's a very wide open space in terms of everything that it's going to be. And also for the collective itself, there's no limit or strict parameters to define exactly what it is. So it makes sense that you have different sorts of icons that you can use or a logo that can shift. It doesn't have to be just one image.
Yeah, exactly.
Thank you for the explanation. So, coming back to Zines and Sounds, I wanted to touch briefly on the buildup process, because I know it was very much a DIY project. Was it chaotic? Was it smooth?
It wasn't smooth. I think it was a bit chaotic, because it used to be a shoe shop and we had to start from the ground up: take out the floor, repaint everything, figure out how we wanted the space to look. We got the space in the summer of last year and thought we’d be finished by November, October. And then it was like, ‘okay, I don't think that's going to work.’ And then, you know, you keep adding time. Also, because I go to school. Duco works. Ben goes to school. Chano works 9to5. Then a friend of ours, Tate, came in to help. And Mees as well. And then Kailash. We had different people helping, but those main three were really helpful in the process of building up.
Yeah, it wasn't smooth. I remember this one day we had to install the lights. I was with Duco and Ben, and we're installing the lights, and we were like, “Oh my God, we've installed the lights. Thank God.” And then we switch on the electricity, and everything just short-circuits. We spent the whole day playing with the wires, walking around, and buying stuff. And then we had to come back the next week and redo everything.
The stuff we do for art, huh?
Yeah. But man, that was long.
You've already touched a bit on this, but what do you hope this space will offer to others? What do you hope it will offer to you?
I hope that the space can be a place where people can discover new art and support local artists, come into contact with new literature. But I also want people to feel comfortable and inspired to create themselves or write something. To get more involved with reading physical media in general. At least to me, that’s the main thing that I really love about such a space. Pulling people out of consuming media only on their phones. Even myself, I have so many PDFs on my phone that I don’t read. When it comes to consuming art, in real time, I really appreciate how people make the zines, because some of them are handmade. I think mainly that. And for myself, learning about other books and other types of art that I've never encountered, because Ben has a different taste than I do. So we’re constantly exchanging ideas and learning from each other. I think that is also something that I'm benefiting from the store right now. I couldn't tell you what I’ll learn in the next months, because we've been open for barely a month.
I also want to work with other artists in the city. I'm so keen to collaborate with everyone, because I want this to be a place where you can make a community of some sense. Even though, as I said before, community is kind of a vague word. But just a space where different people can collaborate to make art in general. Because I feel like art in the city can be quite elitist. So yeah, I do want to see more people who are not professional.
You guys DIY’d the space, so it makes sense that the collaborations that would arise in it would also be kind of DIY. Artists who are scared to even call themselves artists because they're not making money yet.
Yeah.
We had this conversation during the opening, but I wanted to include it in the interview as well. How did you settle on the name Zines and Sounds? I know that name has more to it than just ‘we like music and we like zines.’ So I wanted to hear more about that.
So initially we wanted it to be “the Hothead Shop’ or “Hothead Space” but that was just boring. It didn’t showcase what the shop does or what it means. Also, zines are the main character of this whole thing. The literature aspect is also sound when you read the zines out loud. When you’re reading material out loud or in your head, you hear stuff. Also, I really love rap music and hip hop, and to me, when I’m reading something, I’m envisioning someone kind of voicing it out. So poetry, stuff like that. Because we do have poetry as well, so it’s those things that I can see someone in the space reading to people: a reading, or a spoken word kind of thing. We also have literature about music in the space, and it speaks to just beyond what you’re hearing, and it can tell you about what you’re going to hear. For example, we have a book about jazz, so your relationship with jazz will be different after consuming this little booklet about jazz. You’re gonna hear different stuff. And also because we’re going to do radio in the same space. So all these different elements play into the sound aspect of the space.
We previously discussed that music has physical and visual manifestations, such as vinyl and music videos. Could you give some examples of such music and corresponding artworks that are influential points of reference for you?
So when I think of, let’s say, there's this album called King of the Night by DJ Blackpower. And the album cover is a lion and Mike’s face roaring or something. I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s like disorienting, and the music just sounds like that as well. It’s this immersive experience – it’s ambient but also has hard-hitting drums. And visually, it just makes sense.
Also, the album art for Burning Desire. It’s this mask with a knife, and there are these other macabre elements going on in the cover. And that’s also super reflective of the lyrics on the album. The writing reflects the imagery. The sound is not necessarily macabre, but when you listen to what he’s saying, the cover makes a lot of sense.
Why did you choose specifically zines (versus magazines, books, etc) as the physical art component?
Because zines are things you can easily make. And because we wanted artists from the area to just make stuff, to make something. It’s easier to make a zine than it is to make a book. We wanted to encourage people just to create a mini-project. A zine is not something you’re going to spend a year working on. I mean, you could, but it’s also something that you could just think of something and say, “Okay, I’ll throw this together.” You know, like when you’re making a collage, you’re just thinking “this can match here” and then you already kind of have a collage.
I suppose if a collage is something that you can do in a day, a zine is something that you can do with the theme of 2-3 weeks, maybe a month.
Yeah. We also chose zines because with a zine you have so many variations. You can do a political zine, a picture zine. Whereas “magazine” just sounds commercial. A zine sounds more like something anyone could indulge in. You could say to yourself, “I want to make a zine, I want to try.” But with a magazine, you’d think you don’t have a photographer, artists, etc. A zine can just be drawings and phrases you collect from your notes apps. You can print those out and call them a zine.
It’s low effort and accessible. It’s DIY. I feel like we’re coming to a theme here.
Yeah, that is one of the tenets of the shop: just creating your own world and allowing yourself to explore different avenues creatively.
So are the rumors true? Are you using the space to disseminate revolutionary information?
Yeah, we are printing out political stuff.
Is there anarchist material in the shop?
Yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of anarchism, but we do have some anarchist stuff in the shop.
Yeah, because Tate and I are the most politically active. I don't know what that means exactly, but we read more theory. I call myself a Pan-Africanist who is also a Marxist. Tate is a Marxist as well. Reading, in the general consensus of wanting people to learn more about the world, is the basis of learning about your condition, understanding what goes on in your country, and understanding the civil structure. Understanding the power structures. Learning about your condition, but also learning beyond what your personal experience is. Because you have the empirical approach, the materialist approach, and then you have the lived experience. There’s so much that lived experience can inform you about your general conditions. And inform you about other parts of the world and how the trajectory of history is different from your own cultural/historical trajectory.
Fanon writes about being a Black French man in France, in this book called Black Masks, White Faces. Reading it helps you understand a perspective of “this is how a Black man is perceived in Europe.” Or reading State and Revolution, where Lenin tells you how parliamentary politics always hit a brick wall when you have bourgeois people representing you. That has consequences. Reading helps you understand democracy and some religion that you practice. I guess it is a religion now because everyone believes that this is the only way to do things – liberal democracy, that is.
Art is also really linked to all these movements, people express themselves through art, and divorcing the political from art…you’re already losing if you do that. I feel like that is also an essential part of what we’re trying to do. Disseminate some propaganda.
Let’s go
Because it’s easier to make right-wing propaganda. It’s really easy to be reactionary, in general. It also takes a lot of work to read these books and summarise them. Tate summarised State and Revolution and Black Masks, White Faces. We want to summarise some George Jackson stuff, some Angela Davis stuff. We have to get so much more condensed literature because it’s so much easier to digest in zine form. And you can also learn about, for example, the Dutch workers’ conditions. Like, “why am I being paid such a low wage,” something like that. All these things that no one really reads about. Because most artists are affected by these things as well. So, having them also understand that aspect of what they do, their art is automatically going to be politicized, because it is political. There are some artists (won’t name any names today) who think, “Why should we include politics in art? It doesn’t have to be about that,” and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s why art in the Netherlands is soulless sometimes.”
I also wanted to know how you curate the zine selection. Are you following a specific content or aesthetic criteria, or not really?
To be honest with you, it's all vibes, man. It's all vibes, and also, how expensive is this to sell? We do have expensive stuff in the shop, but we don’t want that to be the main thing. Even selling something for 50 euros is a lot.
Right, that’s more of an investment rather than something you can just pick up.
A vinyl that we have in the shop is 65 euros. I highly doubt that people are going to buy that. Maybe some people will. But that is really expensive. So we have to choose what stuff we want that is affordable, but good as well. Because artists do set the price for the stuff that is in the shop. Does that mean that we have expensive or cheap stuff, necessarily? No. It just means that you have to meet the artists where they’re at sometimes, because they’re not really making that much money anyway. We have zines that we got from London or from people we know who charge us less because they understand what we’re trying to do. Yeah, those do go for cheaper, so right now we do have cheaper zines, which is the goal. But it’s like “okay, how do we sustain having cheap zines and making sure that we can still buy them in?” We don’t want be selling 30 euro, 40 euro fucking zines, man.
If an artist wants to sell their zines at Zines and Sounds, how would they go about that? What would that process look like?
Pull up.
You heard it here first, pull up.
It's really that simple. Pull up or DM on Instagram.
You mentioned that you're exploring some options to get funding for the space. I'm asking this because I think it’s impressive that you guys are young creatives and you put this space together yourselves. I think for a lot of people, myself included, that's very inspirational. So I also wanted to know about some of the practical stuff, like, are you guys trying to get funding? Is that a process? What's that looked like so far?
I think it's a process. And we're definitely going to ask for funding. But the problem is like, damn, like, how are we going to write that thing? The plan is there. It's just writing this plan that is the headache.
You have to write a plan for what you're going to do with the money?
Yeah. To be honest with you, the way Hothead Radio does things is all vibes-based. We’ll just say, “Oh my God, that sounds like a good idea. Let's do it.” And then we just do it. We don't think far in the future. But I think maybe since we're doing this, we have to be more concrete with the plans we're making and what we want to get out of the shop. We already know what we want to get out of the shop, but it's more about having consistency in planning.
What kinds of conversations have you had with people in the space so far? And when you explain the concept to passersby, how is it received?
To be honest, most people I’ve talked to about the shop are people who kind of vaguely know what's going on. I'm not really good at explaining stuff to people, especially because most people who come by are Dutch. I'm fluent in Dutch, don’t get me wrong. But I'm not the most expressive in Dutch. So, to explain to them the idea behind the space, I'll be struggling.
I'll just tell them, “we hebben boekjes, en we willen misschien muziek doen.” I keep it really simple. But yeah, just come through when we have something, you know, keep supporting.
When I'm explaining to people who are not familiar with the space, but who do speak English, I do go more into detail. And also, the people I've mostly explained the space to were artists as well. So they quickly understood the idea. I didn't need a long explanation, it just made sense to them. But Ben and Chano have had to do that more than I have.
But of course, the target audience for the space is more or less artists themselves, and not just necessarily artists but creatives in general.
Yeah. But also people who just want to support community artists. Also, people who love secondhand books. And also people who love music and want to get on the Hothead radio show.
Oh, speaking of, I noticed the merch you have on display, which is great. Some of it is from Hothead, right? Some of it is from another brand. Can you tell me a little bit about the selection that you guys have there?
So the Hothead tees are basically there because… [laughs] we gotta make some money. Like, I mean, if you're selling stuff for under 20 euros, you're going to have to have some kind of other revenue source. So that’s part of it. But it's also fun for people to own something from Hothead.
We also have things from Lilypad, this magazine from Toronto. They make magazines and they make shirts as well. So we have some of those in the shop. Also, we have merch from Mike, a rapper from Brooklyn. He gave us the merch, which was super sweet, he gave us the vinyl as well. He really loves what we’re doing; that’s why he gave it to us.
Last question. What goals or vision do you have for the future of Zines and Sounds? It can be a non-exhaustive list, but I’d love to hear about some things you’d like to see happen in the space.
I definitely want to see a reading in the space. Of poetry, or a zine, or a kind of enchantment, witchcraft. I want to see a pop-up of, for example, the radio with some sick artists from the city or around Europe. If they make good music, it would be sick to have in the shop. I think for now, that’s the main thing, because I’m thinking about the summer right now. Yeah, that’s the goal, now. But who knows, I think the space has so much potential and we are in the process of realising that potential, day by day. I do not know how things will develop, but as I said before, all of this is just trusting our guts and doing stuff. You know, like how a baby learns how to walk and then learns how to run, you just learn on the way. We are in that process of learning.
Again, very in line with your brand. There's not this 40-step plan or lots of government funding. It's more like, just doing your best and vibing.
Also, because we have a lot of fun doing it. This is a project with friends, I don’t feel burdened. It’s just a lot of fun to hang out with people who share the same idea and ideals as you do, even though you have different tastes. They complement each other to give you a small space like ours. I cannot be happier.
Thank you very much. It was lovely interviewing you. And I hope that it continues going super well for the space.
Hashtag hothead radio.
Hashtag hothead radio.