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Through the use of ethnographic work, performance and video analysis, I explore the identities of youth living in the banlieues of France. I then put the current French rap/hip-hop scene under the lens of the histories of hip-hop in France, the history of urbanization in France, and the history of colonialism.

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2 of 2 Fringes of La France

Exploring the “Banlieue” Identity through Hip-Hop

By: Mariama Ndiaye Professor Rashida Braggs, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Global Studies

WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts

May 8, 2017 Special Thanks to: Professor Crane, Head of Global Studies Department

Introduction

In 2005, France’s president, Jacques Chirac, declared that France was in a state of emergency as riots swept over the banlieues of France. Banlieues, otherwise known as suburbs in English, are neighborhoods of various sizes that lie on the outside of the city but are still considered a part of that city. For example, Clichy-sous-Bois and Saint-Denis are banlieues of Paris. One knows one is entering this space when one passes the periphery of the city, a clear and demarcated line saying what is considered a part of the city and the “outside.” Years after the 2005 riots, many have argued that little has changed. When the riots happened in 2005, hip-hop culture dominated the banlieues and they still do to this day. Why is that? Many of the banlieues are composed of first or second-generation immigrants mainly from formerly colonized countries: North Africa, West Africa, and several islands off of Africa. Does this matter to why hip-hop has thrived in the banlieues? With this thesis, I seek to explore these questions and engage with the complexities of the banlieue identity and explore how this identity is expressed through hip-hop.

Figure 1: Ten Years After The French Riots. October 30, 2015. Video.

Background of this Project

The idea for this project first came to fruition while studying abroad in Paris my junior spring at Williams College. I tried to go to spaces full of black artists mainly because those were the crowds that I was attracted to and I found an oasis in two popular places, Le Comptoir General and Favela Chic. Both of these spaces are relatively close to La République, which is a very popular neighborhood in Paris. It is also a location where people are known to gather to protest. Whenever I witnessed a protest late at night, I always took note that the crowd was often overwhelmingly white. This is important to note because it shows that if black people protested, it would not be here under the statue of “Marianne” in the center of La République, the staple of the French identity and freedom. At these two locations, I met several hip-hop dancers who competed regularly and others who competed rarely. They were either of West African-descent or “Maghreb”, which is a term used for anyone from Arab North African countries. I remember speaking to them about race in Paris, specifically. It was difficult for me because we could speak of racial profiling but the word “black” was often never used. Instead, words, such as, Maghreb, or African, were used. As someone coming from America where we speak regularly about race and have a census to calculate race, this surprised me. I learned that the French do not discuss nor recognize race in the same ways Americans do. After hearing more about life in the banlieues, I quickly thought about predominately black spaces and the plight of being black there, such as Chicago, Harlem, and the Bronx to name a few. The issues of a strained relationship with the cops, cyclical lifestyles, lack of jobs, gang violence, and lack of care from the state all resonated with me. Most importantly, the role of hip-hop in all of these spaces also stood out to me. I had learned about the origins and politics of Hip-Hop with professor Neil Roberts my freshmen fall. We spent the last class talking about the globalization of hip-hop. My junior spring, I was witnessing with my own eyes the globalization of which we were speaking. I tied the knowledge I gained from that course and the courses on French history that I took while in Paris to set the foundation for my thesis. -Hop with professor Neil Roberts my freshmen fall. We spent the last class talking about the globalization of hip-hop. My junior spring, I was witnessing with my own eyes the globalization of which we were speaking. I tied the knowledge I gained from that course and the courses on French history that I took while in Paris to set the foundation for my thesis.

I went back to Paris during winter study of my senior year to dive into discovering issues pertaining to the banlieue identity, life in the banlieues, France’s fixation on the assimilation of migrants, and hip hop. If it was true that hip-hop emerged amongst people of African descent within highly marginalized communities, my question then became, how did hip-hop help those of African descent find their identity within a country that pushed for them to fully assimilate into French culture by any means necessary? In order to answer this question, I needed three things: a true understanding of the pioneers of hip-hop and how it came to be, an understanding of life in the banlieues of Paris and how it was perceived by those in power, and finally, an understanding of the pioneers of hip hop in France and the kinds of spaces in France that hip-hop dominated. I also needed to analyze the role colonialism played in the hip-hop world in France.

Relationship to Me

My desire to embark on this thesis journey was in part due to the courses I took but more importantly to how inextricably linked my identity was to this project. While watching French rapper MHD’s A Kele Nta, I thought back to the beaches of Senegal and how dance was an integral part of how we communicated when I visited Dakar. I have been to Dakar over 10 times and the constant commute my family commits to traveling “back home” shows the blurring of lines of my family’s identity in terms of pure geographical location. The joy of my heritage and my traditions within my home seep into everything that I do from praying in my dorm room to my refusal to eat pork to eating with my right hand in Williams dining halls. It has also come with an acute realization at a young age that I was not only African but also Black, which took on a much larger identity in the context of America. My understanding of my African identity connects to my family in the American South, in Dakar, in St. Louis, in Spain, in Paris, and in Frankfurt, Germany. location. The joy of my heritage and my traditions within my home seep into everything that I do from praying in my dorm room to my refusal to eat pork to eating with my right hand in Williams dining halls. It has also come with an acute realization at a young age that I was not only African but also Black, which took on a much larger identity in the context of America. My understanding of my African identity connects to my family in the American South, in Dakar, in St. Louis, in Spain, in Paris, and in Frankfurt, Germany.

My understanding of my Blackness, however, is different, as I understand it from an exclusively American context. After learning about the history of hip-hop with Professor Roberts my Freshman Fall at Williams College, I was fascinated by not only a history that I did not know but also a history that I lived growing up in the heart of Harlem. This was only complicated more when I realized that my summer trips to “Paris” were in fact trips to the banlieues of Paris. This was only further complicated when I met many young people from North African Arab countries who I had almost never encountered growing up in the hood in Harlem but who comprise a large part of the hood in France. I knew I needed to tackle these themes when I studied abroad my Junior Spring of college and met three young hip-hop dancers who brought me to hip hop dance competitions where the majority of the people in the room were rich in melanin. I started to ask myself why I had to travel so far to get to these places, why do these places even exist, did I notice any similarities here between the hip-hop I learned Freshman year of college, and finally, why are there a significant amount of white people who seem extremely comfortable being here and performing? This thesis allowed me to tackle these questions head-on. -on.

This project was important to me for a plethora of reasons, including my love of hip-hop, my history with Paris, and my African origins. I have grown up listening to hip- hop in my home in Harlem and have seen street block parties, people rapping on the street, and people dancing around me constantly. I witnessed many hip-hop dance crazes emerge around me, such as the Harlem Shake. While the world was getting on board new dance crazes, they were being created around me, engulfing me into the culture of hip-hop dance. I grew up learning choreographic hip-hop style and have continued it while here at Williams College. My love of hip-hop continued in Paris where I sought dance clubs that played almost exclusively rap or Afro-beats. These places in Paris soon felt like home because many of those who worked there were Senegalese migrants.

As a second-generation Senegalese woman, the workers often told me that I was Senegalese but happened to live in America just like how they were Senegalese and happened to live in Paris due to circumstances. The underlying draw was that either we or our parents moved from Senegal to another land to seek employment and a better life but did not move to seek another culture. This meant that regardless of where one was born, one’s people remained Senegalese.

In regards to notions of belonging, my interactions with Senegalese people had less to do with geographical space and more to do with culture. The reality was that growing up Senegalese meant growing up with a set of ethnic traditions that was not exclusive to a location. I did not have to live in Senegal to grow up Senegalese. With a strong ethnic identity and loyalty to Senegal, this was shared throughout the generations and not only with those who boarded a plane to move to Paris or to New York City. Given the difficulties of economic success in Senegal, it was clear to us and our parents that one’s physical body migrated but one’s mind often did not. If this was to be true, then Parisians who grew up in a Senegalese household had more in common with me, an American who grew up in a Senegalese household, than they might with those from different backgrounds who live in their neighborhoods. , it was clear to us and our parents that one’s physical body migrated but one’s mind often did not. If this was to be true, then Parisians who grew up in a Senegalese household had more in common with me, an American who grew up in a Senegalese household, than they might with those from different backgrounds who live in their neighborhoods.

Another strong connection I have to this project is my relationship with Paris itself. I had grown up traveling to “Paris” for vacation with my family. In reality, they lived outside of Paris. They lived in the banlieue, Montreuil, which was very close to Fontenay-sous-Bois.

Figure 2: A Map of Montreuil, a banlieue outside of Paris. Weather-forecast.com

My dad would reward me with a trip to Paris and I spent a month or several weeks in the banlieues. For me, this was Paris. I did not realize there was truly a strong difference until I did a summer abroad program in Paris in high school where I lived in the center of Paris. I did not grow up going to the Paris that was rather white and that had a very large

Eiffel tower in the middle of it. I did not know the Eiffel Tower existed until I went on an American exchange program to France. The streets were populated, there was no public housing, there were clothing stores, and there were cafés on every street. These were things that I rarely saw in my family’s neighborhood in Montreuil. On this trip, I was not allowed to visit my family because I was told it was too far and I was too young to go on my own. This bothered me given that I was supposed to be in the same city. American exchange program to France. The streets were populated, there was no public housing, there were clothing stores, and there were cafés on every street. These were things that I rarely saw in my family’s neighborhood in Montreuil. On this trip, I was not allowed to visit my family because I was told it was too far and I was too young to go on my own. This bothered me given that I was supposed to be in the same city.

This project also resonates with me given that I would be studying the exact people I have lived with, interacted with, and whom I call family. I remember speaking to my young nephews as they showed me the new rap songs, talked about their Senegalese origins, and clarified how they were from “Montreuil”, and not from France. The feeling of belonging and also the feeling of rejection from the French state is an important element of this thesis. At 12 years old, I could sense their strained relationship with the state of France and how hip-hop was their vehicle of expression. Their denial of France as their true home was not necessarily a denial of their existence within the nation of France. It was instead an awareness of the denial of their existence by the nation of France. In order to understand why my 12-year old nephew would feel this rejection, it is important to analyze where this may be coming from. The reality is that his feelings about the nation of France is not unique to him and is often heard across the banlieues amongst the marginalized youth. In this thesis, I use my personal historical experiences in conjunction with my research to understand my 12-year old nephew and my hip hop dance friends, and then present this knowledge to the Williams community. Methodology

My thesis features analysis of histories, films, and dances, as well as ethnographic interviews and film production. My thesis pulls concepts from postcolonial theory, performance theory, and critical race theory, as well as studies of France and hip-hop. The background research to my project also draws on both films and writings. I watched, La Haine, interviews and film production. My thesis pulls concepts from postcolonial theory, performance theory, and critical race theory, as well as studies of France and hip-hop. The background research to my project also draws on both films and writings. I watched, La Haine,1 Hip Hop Evolution,2 and the Vice documentary, “France’s Toughest Rappers”.3 In each film, I searched for themes, important historical facts, and anecdotes from the characters. For example, Hip Hop Evolution is a CNN original series documentary on Netflix, which was released in September 2016. As a documentary, I pulled anecdotes from the pioneers of hip-hop, such as Grandmaster Flash and The Grand Wizard Theodore of Fantastic Five. From them, I got first-hand accounts of what was happening in the 1970s Bronx and why the culture of hip-hop emerged in this space. The Vice documentary, although a bit trivial, goes around France to where the 2005 riots happened, such as Clichy-Sous-Bois, Grigny, and Evry. They interview local artists who are a part of the underground rap scene in these locations and get their perspective on why they rap. In this documentary, I pulled anecdotes from the rappers to see if the anecdotes correlated with what I read in the many books and texts I reviewed for this project. One of these works is that of Eric Marlière who interviews the youth of the banlieues in La France nous a Laches.4 Then, I tie this into the works of Leopold Senghor in

1 Kevin Elstob. "Hate (La Haine) review". Film Quarterly. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 51 (2 (Winter, 1997-1998)): 44–49. 2 Dir. Darby Wheeler and Sam Dunn. “Hip Hop Evolution.” Netflix. 2016. Video. Dir. Darby Wheeler and Sam Dunn. “Hip Hop Evolution.” Netflix. 2016. Video. 3 “Meet France’s Toughest Rappers.” Vice. 2012. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po7h__cl1ak. 4 Éric Marlière, La France Nous A Lachés! (Fayard:2008).

“I Declaim You, Naett!”5 to understand the colonial context of the conflict of ethnic identity under colonial power. I then proceed to place the work of Senghor into the effects of colonialism today amongst the same population of people living in the cités. Finally, I read the histories of hip-hop in America through the works of Tricia Rose, Christopher Malone, and then of hip hop in France through the works of Hélène Taddei- Lawson, Marie-Christine Vernay, and Dionne Bennett, to name a few.

My project also consists of live dance analysis and dance ethnographic work. I spent my time in Paris during Winter Study attending two dance battles, one dance workshop, and conducting two interviews. The use of dance ethnographic work as a research methodology was critical for me to truly understanding what people were experiencing instead of trying to theorize their lives. I must first define the words that I will be using in this introduction: ethnography, ethnology, and cultural anthropology. Julian M. Murchison describes ethnography as a, “research strategy that allows researchers to explore and examine the culture and societies that are a fundamental part of the human experience” by studying people in action and being a participant-observer.6 Ethnography looks at a specific culture requiring direct fieldwork and describing one’s experience. Ethnology is a comparative study of “ethnographic data, society and culture.7 Dance ethnology first emerged on the anthropological scene in 1960 through Gertrude

5 Zaynab Quadri. “I Will Pronounce your name by Sedar Leopold Senghor”. Pulse.ng. 06 January 2015. Web. http://pulse.ng/books/poem-i-will-pronounce-your-name-by-sedar-leopold-senghorid3821090. html. 6 Julian M. Murchison. Ethnography Essentials: Designing, Conducting, and Presenting Your Research. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010). Print. 7 "1.4 Ethnology and Ethnography in Anthropology." (Human Relations Area Files -Cultural Information for Education and Research), 25 Jan. 2017. Web.

Kurath.8 A dance scholar, Gertrude Kurath saw that dance could be studied with its own parameters in an anthropological setting. Even though ethnography and ethnology are a part of the field of anthropology, social/cultural anthropologist Adrienne L. Kaeppler creates a distinction within the study of dances between anthropologists and ethnologists. “Although folklorists who study dance and dance ethnologists will speak for themselves elsewhere in this volume, it seems to me that these researchers are more specifically interested in dances and dancing, and take ‘a dance’ or ‘dances’ as their primary unit, while anthropologists are more interested in the larger subject of human movement and the abstract concept of ’dance’”.9

Although the difference between these three categories and how they overlap are rather contentious, for the sake of this paper, I use the term ‘dance ethnographists’. In my research, I do not focus on the exact moves being displayed and their meaning. I focus on contextualizing and expanding our understanding of these moves and the spaces in which they flourish to beyond space and beyond time.

As a dark-skinned hip hop dancer from Harlem with Senegalese origins studying the effect of hip-hop culture on the lives of those of African-descent in Paris and its suburbs, I did not go into a foreign culture to see how the ‘natives’ act. When one thinks of anthropologists, this is often the imagery that is associated with field work: white men entering non-Western spaces bringing with them a sense of power with their dominating and “civilized” culture. As a dark-skinned Senegalese-American woman who had a grasp on the language and familial ties to the land, my ethnographic work eschewed that perspective of anthropology. While in Paris, my only goal was to “define the role of dance

8 Theresa J. Buckland. Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods, and Issues in Dance Ethnography. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Print.1. 9 Adrienne L. Kaeppler, “The Mystique of Fieldwork,” Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography, 15.

in the life of a society” in the words of dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham.10 Given how the world of hip-hop includes graffiti, dance, and rap, why did I do my onthe- ground research in January on dance? My thesis seeks to examine the culture of hip- hop and the medium of dance was readily accessible to me but was also a medium that could do exactly what I sought to discover.

Adrienne Kaeppler proposed the idea that “Movements are cultural artefacts, which, in their specific combinations and uses, belong to a specific culture or subculture and can be activated for specific purposes.”11 If movements are cultural artefacts, then the spaces in which those moves are conducted can only be seen as an emblem of culture. My thesis demonstrates that movement can do this but can also act as a disruption. By focusing my ethnographic work on movement within a select community, I am afforded the ability to analyze a specific community more in-depth. At the same time, due to the nature of hip-hop, its globalization also affords me the ability to blur the dimensions of space and time. I can focus my attention on the youth of the banlieues while also layering the influences of French colonialism, the history of French hip-hop, and the history of hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon. Thus, my anthropological work, although focused on a select community, is truly transcendent. Given my ethnic background and my ability to speak the native language, I was able to examine the importance of dance as a medium of expressing oneself in a way that others could not do.

I studied these performers by developing rapport with my interviewees, who I will speak of shortly, and gaining access to these spaces by developing new connections. The

10 Dunham, Katherine. Dances of Haiti. Los Angeles, CA: Center for Afro-American Studies. (U of California, Los Angeles 1983), xvi. 11 Adrienne Kaeppler, Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography, 15.

one issue here was that, as anthropologist Anca Giurchescu notes, “important details, considered obvious, (could) be easily overlooked.”considered obvious, (could) be easily overlooked.”12 I, however, still had an outsider’s perspective given that those who I spoke with quickly realized that I was American or that I did not know who the best “lockers” or “poppers” of the moment were. Some even perceived my Senegalese identity before they saw me as American. Others saw me as a foreigner regardless of my appearance. Because my interviews are conducted for the most part in English, one could argue that I was treated differently than a French person of Senegalese origins would be conducting these interviews. With this knowledge, I went into my interviews knowing that I was seen as an outsider regardless of whether I looked like the people around me. I also recognized that the fact that I looked like those around me gave me a leverage that many others cannot share.

Ethnographers also often speak of the “informant”, otherwise known as the interviewee. My main issue is that the word informant is often used for those who are spies letting the outside know information that they do not readily have access to or are not supposed to know about. One thing about hip-hop is that it is a global informant as it informs the world of the plight of people, sometimes deceivingly. By traveling to Paris and interviewing young friends of mine in this world of hip-hop, I would never call them an informant but instead, “my sources of knowledge”. With this understanding, I am not denying my accessibility to their knowledge while also recognizing how critical they are to my research. Ethnographer Dwight Conquergood criticized the ethnographer’s inability

12 Anca Giurchescu, “Past and Present in Field Research: a Critical History of Personal Experience”, Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography, 45. to fully integrate themselves within a community.mmunity.13 He asked the question, “What happens to our thinking about performance when we move it outside of Aesthetics and situate it at the center of lived experience?”14 In order for an ethnographer to dismantle the power dynamic between observers and the observed, ethnographers have to recognize a paradigm that involves “immediacy, involvement, and intimacy as modes of understanding.”15 As a close friend of those who I was interviewing as well as an individual who knew people who attended these dance competitions, I had the privilege of embracing this intimacy and involvement necessary to my study.

This privilege allowed me to interact with those who I was observing as if I too was being observed. Katherine Dunham notes the importance of developing that bond with those whose lives you are trying to understand. During her research in the Republic of Haiti, Katherine Dunham discovered, “the most intimate of the sacred dances takes place within the inner rooms of the hounfor [voudou temple], and only the initiated may see and participate in them. It was not until my own initiation that I was aware of the ritual formula within the hounfor.”16 If Katherine Dunham were to not have reached a level of confidence and trust amongst the Haitian people, she would have never been initiated and would have never found out about this sacred dance. This is quite significant as it proves how one’s acceptance into the community they are studying is of utmost importance. The lines between observer and observed must be blurred.

13 D. Soyini Madison and Judith Hamera. The SAGE Handbook of Performative Studies, (Sage Publications: California 2006), 340. 14 D Conquergood, Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics, (Communication Monographs, Vol. 58, June 1991), 190. 15 D Conquergood, Beyond the Text: Toward a Performative Cultural Politics (1998), 26. 16 Katherine Dunham, Dances of Haiti, 18.

By developing that trust between my interviewees, and myself I was able to inch closer to blurring those lines. My interviews were much easier to conduct because they felt as if my interviews were less like an interrogation but more like a conversation with friends in which we exchanged knowledge. closer to blurring those lines. My interviews were much easier to conduct because they felt as if my interviews were less like an interrogation but more like a conversation with friends in which we exchanged knowledge.

Figure 3: My Interviewees. Frantz (left) and Loick (right). January 2017. Paris.

My interviewees were Loick and Frantz. Loick is of Cameroonian-descent and was born and raised in the banlieues of Paris. He still lives there with his mother. Frantz was born in Cape Verde and spent his entire life traveling, moving to the banlieues of Paris six years ago. He now lives in Paris as of December of 2016, but his whole family is still in his old neighborhood. As both are friends of mine, I was privileged to be able to talk to them on an informal level that allowed me to truly be conversational in ways that others could not.

By thinking of myself as a participant-observer, I better connected with my interviewees and the dancers I engaged with. In terms of the dance battles or exploring the banlieues of Paris, such as St. Denis, Fontenay sous-Bois, Montreuil, Aubervilliers, and Neuilly-Plaisance, I truly tested what it meant to be both an observer and a participant. This mainly came into play with my camera. For the most part, no one walked around these neighborhoods with an expensive Nikon DLSR camera taking photos or videos. This is more likely to be seen in the middle of Paris. The question I had to ask myself was, “How can I blend in here?” Bronislaw Malinowski, credited with establishing modern standards of ethnographic fieldwork says, “It is good for the ethnographer sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going on. He can take part in the natives’ games, he can follow them on their visits and walks, sit down and listen and share their conversations.” photos or videos. This is more likely to be seen in the middle of Paris. The question I had to ask myself was, “How can I blend in here?” Bronislaw Malinowski, credited with establishing modern standards of ethnographic fieldwork says, “It is good for the ethnographer sometimes to put aside camera, note book and pencil, and to join in himself in what is going on. He can take part in the natives’ games, he can follow them on their visits and walks, sit down and listen and share their conversations.”17 Outside of the dance battles while walking around and speaking to friends, I did not walk around with my camera but instead, took mental notes that I wrote down on my phone as soon as it was accessible to me. In this case, I took part within the community, learning from my friends, and making sure that I, as a researcher, did not readily present myself as an outsider.

In my interactions with dance, I videotaped. As dancers competed or learned, I recorded with my video camera without being seen as an outsider given that this is a regular occurrence. In the dances, I looked for four things: how the dancers interacted with each other, how the crowd interacted with the dancers, what kind of music was being played, and the demographics of the dancers. This ethnographic study of the dancers allowed me to do “what every ethnographer understands…that the mode of ‘discussion,’ the discourse, is not always and exclusively verbal” but can manifest itself through dance.18 I sought to understand what drew people to compete and why people would attend an event, such as a dance battle.

17 Bronislaw Malinowski, Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography, 21-22. 18 Conquergood, 189.

Contribution to Global Studies

With our new American president and with rising xenophobia in France, it is important to explore what it means to be a part of a culture different from that of your parents. The struggle of identity is one that we are used to speaking of. It is not often at sheltered, elite American institutions, such as Williams College that we hear of this struggle of identity amongst those of African-descent living in Paris. I hope to show the Williams community how the struggle of identity is a global phenomenon by doing so through an avenue that many of us know, hip-hop, and by hearing/seeing it from people on-the-ground. Although many may find it interesting simply because of the topics this thesis grapples with, this thesis contributes a dynamic understanding of how the world interacts through music and dance, as well as how we can witness similar, yet different, situations manifesting themselves throughout the globe.

Hip-hop is one of the prime examples of globalization. As Craig Albert writes, “Aside from being translocal, the movement of hip-hop between local and global contexts can also be explained by the concept of globalization: that is, simultaneously engaging the intersections of global and local dynamics.”19 Not only will people reading this Global studies thesis learn about French politics they may not have known about before, they will also learn about the rise of hip hop in France and what it is like to attend a dance battle in the banlieues of Paris. Beyond the surface, they will learn what it is like to live in betwixt two identities and hopefully, develop some understanding of the consequences of building more walls and deeming more people as “outsiders”.

19 Craig Douglas Albert. “No Church in the Wild: Politics, Morality, and Hip Hop in the Political Science Classroom.” The Organic Globalizer: Hip Hop, Political Development and Movement Culture. (Bloomsbury, 2014), 181.

Structure

Before diving into the origins of hip-hop, one has to set up a framework of France in order to give a strong enough context to why this cultural phenomenon would sweep the banlieues of France. My first chapter does exactly that as I question what it means to be French and why the French reaction to massive urbanization has shifted this French identity. My first chapter focuses on the urbanization of Paris. In addition, this chapter breaks down the massive immigration movements to Paris in the 1900s and its ramifications on the French identity. As the French summoned its colonial subjects to mainland France, the question then became what to do with these individuals.

In line with the pillars of the French republic dating back to the French Revolution of 1789, the French then had to re-imagine what France would look like with the influence of foreign identities. I argue in this chapter that the French for the most part saw their colonial subjects as bodies there to serve the French republic. The need for their bodies and the silencing of their identities outside of the French model of society led to the coupling of colonial subjects with notions of “bad nationalism.” I also argue that the creation of the banlieues or the “hood” was in fact a reflection of this need to silence and marginalize colonial subjects. The ramifications of how the banlieues and public housing were constructed are still felt today. This chapter also shows how an identity has been formed within the banlieues that is defined by the shared plight of its residents.

My second chapter dives into hip-hop in both the United States and in France. I begin by looking at the emergence of hip-hop in the United States and contextualizing its genesis in the South Bronx. I then look at how hip-hop crossed the seas and took hold in France, eventually looking at its dominance in predominately poor and marginalized

French communities of color. Finally, I tie this history into my dance ethnographic work that I conducted in Paris January of 2017. The latter half of this chapter explores notions of space, audience, and dress in the Parisian hip-hop community. ench communities of color. Finally, I tie this history into my dance ethnographic work that I conducted in Paris January of 2017. The latter half of this chapter explores notions of space, audience, and dress in the Parisian hip-hop community.

My third chapter focuses my work on two French rappers, Médine and MHD. I analyze the works of these two artists through the context of colonialism. I contend that the ramifications of colonialism are still felt today amongst second-generation youth of African and Arab-descent. In order to do so, I first give the history of colonialism in Africa focusing on their respective origin countries, Algeria, Senegal, and Guinea. Then, I use video analysis and lyrical analysis to show how the French colonialist agenda has not ended nor has the second-generation of immigrants become numb to this agenda.

This semester-long project has allowed me to explore the intricacies of my identity through the lens of hip-hop in a foreign country to which I often feel at home. The chapters I present to you weave together as they help us create a more full and vibrant understanding of hip-hop in the banlieues and those that serve as the face of the phenomenon. The French banlieue identity is a reflection of space, time, and racism, shaped by French politics. By understanding the roots that have allowed this tree to grow, we can understand why it has grown to its towering stature. Chapter 1: La France Brûle20

20 France is Burning

The opening scenes of La Haine depict a young black man of African origins, Hubert, boxing in an abandoned and ruined basement. This basement was previously his boxing studio but was set ablaze and destroyed during the riots within his banlieue of Paris. The looting and riots sprung up in reaction to the hospitalization of a man of North African origins, Abdel, after being brutally beaten by police officers. Although not mentioned in the film, the filming was done in the Parisian banlieue of Chanteloup-les- Vignes. La Haine depict a young black man of African origins, Hubert, boxing in an abandoned and ruined basement. This basement was previously his boxing studio but was set ablaze and destroyed during the riots within his banlieue of Paris. The looting and riots sprung up in reaction to the hospitalization of a man of North African origins, Abdel, after being brutally beaten by police officers. Although not mentioned in the film, the filming was done in the Parisian banlieue of Chanteloup-les- Vignes.

Figure 4: Opening Scene of La Haine. Dir. Matthieu Kassovitz. 1999. Video.

The producer and writer, Matthieu Kassovitz has cited that the idea for La Haine originated from the aftermath of the death of young Zairian, Makome M’Bowole at the hands of the police in 1993.21 In a review of La Haine, Kevin Elstob notes that Makome “was killed at point blank range while in police custody and handcuffed to a radiator. The officer was reported to have been angered by Makome’s words, and had been threatening him when the gun went off accidentally.”22 Kassovitz was also inspired by the death of

21 Kevin Elstob. "Hate (La Haine) review". Film Quarterly. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. 51 (2 (Winter, 1997-1998)): 44–49. 22Ibid.

Malik Ousseking, a 22-year-old man of African origins who died after being badly beaten by the riot police during mass protests in 1986. -year-old man of African origins who died after being badly beaten by the riot police during mass protests in 1986.23 Violence after violence. The unjust deaths of black and Arab bodies in the banlieues led to the creation of this film.

In 2005, protests swept the banlieues of France after two teenage boys of African origins, Zyed Benna and Bouna Troaré, were electrocuted to death hiding from the police in an electricity substation in the Parisian banlieue Clichy-sous-Bois.24 It later became clear that these two young boys had not committed a crime but ran at the sight of police, which demonstrates the level of threat and fear the police symbolized to these young children. During the first day of rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois, Nicholas Sarkozy, then France’s interior minister and future president of France, led an intense law-andorder tactic, which led to the arrest of more than 30 people.25 The youth had set cars and trash cans alight, threw stones at police, and at least one bullet was fired.26 As riots spread across the country, France declared a state of emergency. In 2005, Nadira Achab, from the Parisian banlieue, Grigny, said, “There’s a feeling that nothing has really changed, that the unrest could happen again.”27

23 Elaine Sciolino. "Violent Youths Threaten to Hijack Demonstrations in Paris". The New York Times. 30 Mar. 2006. Web. 24 Angelique Chrisafis. "The Trial That Could Lay Bare France's Racial Divide." The Guardian. 15 Mar. 2015. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/15/trial-france-racial-divide. 25Jon Henle. "Sarkozy Pledges Police Crackdown after Riots in Paris." The Guardian. 31 Oct. 2005. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/01/france.jonhenley. 26 Ibid. 27Angelique Chrisafis. "'Nothing's Changed': 10 Years after French Riots, Banlieues Remain in Crisis." The Guardian. 22 Oct. 2015. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/nothings-changed-10-years-after-frenchriots- banlieues-remain-in-crisis.

Figure 5: Paris anti-police protests following ‘rape’ charge. Euronews. Feb 7, 2017. Video.

On February 2, 2017, officers “checking ID documents” arrested Theo, a black man of African origins, in Aulnay-Sous-Bois, which is within the Seine-Saint-Denis banlieue of Paris.28 On Feb. 5th, one police officer was placed under formal investigation for “suspected rape” and three others for “unnecessary violence” as Theo alleged “one of the officers sodomized him with a police baton.”29 By February 9th, the forceful penetration of a truncheon by the officers was deemed an accident after reviewing video footage showing a policeman “applying a truncheon blow horizontally across the buttocks with a truncheon” and also showing Theo’s trousers slipping down on their own.30 Before this ruling came out and many days after, people of the neighboring department, Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis), took to the streets, coming out in hundreds in support of Theo and against police brutality and racism. Quickly, riots started to spread across the banlieues.

28 Mark Hanrahan. "Suspect Theo's Alleged Rape by a Cop Sparks Violence in Paris." NBCNews.com. NBCUniversal News Group, 12 Feb. 2017. Web. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/investigation-launched-theo-rape-case-paris-proteststurn- violent-n719901. 29 Ibid. 30 News Wires. "French Enquiry Finds ‘insufficient Proof’ Police Raped Young Man with Truncheon." France 24. France 24, 09 Feb. 2017. Web. http://www.france24.com/en/20170209france- inquiry-finds-insufficient-proof-police-raped-young-man.

Clashes between police officers erupted, cars were set ablaze, and rocks were thrown at storefronts. The riots spread to the banlieues of Val-d’Oise and various protests popped up across the country. More than 40 people were arrested. storefronts. The riots spread to the banlieues of Val-d’Oise and various protests popped up across the country. More than 40 people were arrested.

I asked one of my interviewees Loick a question; “In response to the movie La Haine, do you think anything has changed?” He responded, “I can tell you that everything has changed but I could also tell you that nothing has changed.”31 Due to the continuing unrest after the death of Theo, many French people are currently asking themselves this question. Are the banlieues of La Haine still in existence today and has anything changed?

I argue in this chapter that the answer for the large part is no. First, I explore what the banlieues are and when they were created. Then, I look at the influx of immigrants to the banlieues. From there, I explore the banlieues of Paris in contemporary politics, through published ethnographic studies, specifically studying the relationship between the youth and the police. The themes important to this chapter are cyclical: Rejection from the Outside, Rejection by the Insiders, and Unity of the Insiders. These three themes have turned into a cyclical process as the state and the cities target those within the banlieues, notably the police. This then leads to a form of growing unity amongst the banlieue populations that help bring them together in a way that makes them an even greater threat to the state, leading them to be even more rejected by the state. Diving into the history of the banlieues is important in understanding the context of this cycle. In order to talk about the banlieues of today, one must go back to the first migrants from the African continent who became the “body” of France through their physical labor but

31 Loick, Interview, Centre Place du Hip-Hop. 20. Feb. 2017. who were denied their Frenchness unless they fully assimilated into French culture. I then analyze first-hand accounts from those within the banlieues, either from my own interviews, other ethnographic studies, or film documentaries. I then analyze first-hand accounts from those within the banlieues, either from my own interviews, other ethnographic studies, or film documentaries.

The Thirty Glorious Years and the Bad Nationalists that Sparked It

Deemed “Les Trentes Glorieueses” (the Thirty Glorious Years), 1945-1974 marked a spike in economic growth in France. This was in large part due to their push for immigrants, starting with the Italians, the Poles, and eventually the Algerians after World War II. This then moved mainly to the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Moroccans, Turks, and Sub-Saharan Africans.32 It is important to recognize that France has always had a shortage of human capital and throughout the decades, and have greatly encouraged immigration. By the 1960s, the majority of France’s immigrants were from the Maghreb.33 With a huge spike in immigration during the “30 Glorious Years”, it was no longer a question of bodies needed to promote France's economic growth. As people began to settle in France with no intention of returning home, the uncertainty of their commitment to France as a nation spurred questions of good or bad “nationalism.” Before understanding what it means to be a good or bad nationalist, one must first ask what nationalism means in the context of France. A fantastic place to start is Ernest Renan’s “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” “What is a Nation?”

In “Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?”, French historian Ernest Renan argues that a

32 James Hollifield, Philip Martin, Pia Orrenius. Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective (Stanford University Press: 2014), 190. 33 Maghreb is someone from Northern African countries who are also counted as Arab.

nation is not solely based on a spiritual principle but also composed of daily plebiscites.34 Off of the heels of the French Revolution of 1789, Renan’s understanding of nationhood is symbolized by the will of the people and more importantly that the most important requirement of a nation is to have people constantly involved in maintaining the nation. This means that it is the responsibility for all individuals within the nation to participate in their own governance. Equally as important, it means those individuals work daily to uphold the pillars of society.

In the case of France, I argue that those pillars of society were established after the French Revolution of 1789 with the motto, Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity).

Figure 6: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité on a government building. Wikipedia.

This motto is engraved in every government building in France and has come to symbolize French people. In short, the motto establishes a French identity as united and indivisible. In an effort to minimize the role of the Church, the concept of Laïcité

34 Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce Qu’une Nation? Conférence Faite en Sorbonne, Paris, 11. Mars. 1882.

(Secularism) was added in 1905.Secularism) was added in 1905.35 Unlike the American understanding of secularism, Laïcité states that the job of the state is to protect the French people from any threat to their ‘liberty of conscience’, which includes religion.36Laïcité emphasizes that there is absolutely no role of religion in the public space, including public schools.37 Therefore, it is the job of the state to protect the people from religion and their free-will from the imposition of religion. Lacïté in combination with the motto of French society, “Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité” creates a French identity marked by a secular state in which everyone must contribute to its well-being. Most importantly, this nation prides itself on its indivisibility. In other words, one is French and secular before they are anything else. If one is to distinguish themselves from this identity shaped by the principles of French white men in 1789, then they could be considered “bad nationalists.”

It is clear, however, that bad nationalism does not mean anyone who distinguishes himself or herself from the French secular identity. Nuns who wear a cowl, a veil, and cover their entire bodies similarly to how some practicing Muslim women dress are accepted by French society. At the same time, wearing a burkini, which is swimwear that covers one’s entire body except for their face, is banned in France. This is because it is associated with Muslim women, although non-Muslim women also wear the burkini. In addition, the wearing of the niqab, a Muslim religious garment that covers all of the woman’s body except for her eyes is also banned in France. The ruling that no religious garment is allowed to be worn in public schools originated from a trial in 2004 when two

35Elizabeth Winkler. "Is It Time for France to Abandon Laïcité?" New Republic. 07 Jan. 2016. Web. https://newrepublic.com/article/127179/time-france-abandon-laicite. 36 Qu’est-ce que la laïcité ? Gouvernement.fr Web. http://www.gouvernement.fr/qu-est-ce-que-lalaicite. 37 As of 2000, wearing all form of religiously symbolic objects in public schools is banned.

young hijabi women were kicked out of school that day for wearing a hijab. We must not forget that while all of this is happening, the obvious religiosity of the ways nuns dress receives no rebuke from French society. I argue that Laïcité in modern day France has nothing to do with religion and all to do with culture with Islam becoming the clear target. This is because Islam is a foreign concept to France that can only be seen as a menace and a threat to French nationalism. Therefore, to be Muslim in France and to showcase your religiosity is nothing short of being a bad nationalist. ab. We must not forget that while all of this is happening, the obvious religiosity of the ways nuns dress receives no rebuke from French society. I argue that Laïcité in modern day France has nothing to do with religion and all to do with culture with Islam becoming the clear target. This is because Islam is a foreign concept to France that can only be seen as a menace and a threat to French nationalism. Therefore, to be Muslim in France and to showcase your religiosity is nothing short of being a bad nationalist.

Brent Hayes Edwards’ The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism tackles this notion of “bad nationalism”. “A ‘bad nationalist’ is…a subject who doesn’t perform nationalism, who doesn’t follow the protocol, who doesn’t register.”38 Edward’s understanding of a bad nationalist is an individual who first sees a set of rules and either chooses to obey them or chooses to add on their own rules. Both of these approaches to nationalism dismiss the universalism and indivisible nature of the nationalism proposed by the nation of France. One could also argue that the bad nationalism proposed by Brent Hayes Edwards emphasizes a singular nationhood. If French nationalism is indivisible, influence from any other nation may be seen as a threat to the nation of France.

Immigrants entering France were expected to enter with a blank slate. Their identity in France was liminal. They were stuck “betwixt-and-between, in the margins, on the threshold.”39 These immigrants were expected to fully adapt to the French motto

38 Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Print, 240. 39 Nelson, Havelock, and Michael A. Gonzales. Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-hop Culture. New York: Harmony, 1991. Print, 121.

without any hesitation. Many of these immigrants were considered “bad” because they did not enter France with this blank slate. I argue later that due to colonialism, they would never really be able to fully become “French”. However, for now, I contend that this obsession with “strangeness” and “bad nationalists” is due to the disruption in the indivisibility of the French republic. did not enter France with this blank slate. I argue later that due to colonialism, they would never really be able to fully become “French”. However, for now, I contend that this obsession with “strangeness” and “bad nationalists” is due to the disruption in the indivisibility of the French republic.

Georges Marco released a book in 1932 titled, Les étrangers en France, that pioneered this discussion by making a racial distinction “between good and bad nationalities, those fit to be immigrants and who should be kept out.”40 Almost a decade letter, in 1945, Alfred Suavy, a well-known demographer, anthropologist, and historian, “argued for a selective immigration policy that distinguished those who promised to stay in France from those coming only to work”. This led to the question of the immigrants' capacity to assimilate, which has become the bedrock of French nationalism.

In 2006, then President, Nicholas Sarkozy of France created a law named CESDNA, nicknamed “immigration choisie” after saying, “We no longer want an immigration that is inflicted (on us), but an immigration that is chosen. This is the founding principle of the new immigration policy I advocate.”41 What Sarkozy really means to say is that there is a culture of France and if one was not going to be more “French” than one’s origins, one shouldn't be allowed to come in the first place. Sarkozy, even as President, had yet to fully explain how he planned on selecting immigrants more prone to assimilation than “communautarisme," which is a negative French word often 40 Jamese Hollifield, Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective. California: Stanford University Press, 2014. Print, 190. 41 José Paz and Jay Pinho. "Breaking the Status Quo: Sarkozy’s France, the European Union, and Immigration Reform." Humanity in Action. N.p., n.d. Web.http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/118-breaking-the-status-quo-sarkozy-sfrance- the-european-union-and-immigration-reform. thrown around in these conversations of immigration. The notion of “communautarisme" is the notion of the purposeful isolation of communities of immigrants and their children by emphasizing their own culture, religious expression, and views of life over the French way of living centered on the French tenants: liberté, egalité, fraternité and the added laïcité. Communautarisme’s emphasis on cultural distinctions stands in stark contrast with the indivisible French identity we see within the above French tenants. is the notion of the purposeful isolation of communities of immigrants and their children by emphasizing their own culture, religious expression, and views of life over the French way of living centered on the French tenants: liberté, egalité, fraternité and the added laïcité. Communautarisme’s emphasis on cultural distinctions stands in stark contrast with the indivisible French identity we see within the above French tenants.

In 1974, France’s economy crashed and the then Chirac government decided to suspend immigration to France and close its borders.42 In 1977, the “Return Aid” was enacted that would grant a bonus of 10,000 francs to any immigrant permanently returning to their country of origin.43 Very few people decided to return home. Then, family reunification was facilitated allowing people who decided to stay in France to be naturalized and to bring their families to France. All of a sudden, there was an influx of children and wives who came to France and re-united with their husbands. Although the borders were closing, France opened an even larger Pandora’s box as droves of families came to be reunited permanently with their loved ones. Now, these families needed to be housed in accommodation that did not yet exist.

The Origins of “Les banlieues” as we know it

Although the history of the banlieues is quite diverse, along with the types of houses that exist in these neighborhoods, we often think of H.L.M, or Habitation à Loyer

Modéré (rent-controlled housing), which are often projects on the outskirts of major French

42Christophe Gracieux. "La Politique D'immigration En France De 1974 à 1983." Jalons. Ina Global, 29 July 1983. Web. http://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu01065/la-politiqued- immigration-en-france-de-1974-a-1983.html. 43 Ibid.

cities. HLM housing projects can be private or public. Before 2001, 72% of HLMs were built and 95% of those built between 2001 and 2011 were small buildings or individual houses. These buildings contained approximately around 20 apartments. ties. HLM housing projects can be private or public. Before 2001, 72% of HLMs were built and 95% of those built between 2001 and 2011 were small buildings or individual houses. These buildings contained approximately around 20 apartments.44 These HLMs are mainly funded by Livret A, “a type of savings account related to the Caisse des dépôts et consignations45 (Fund of Deposits and Consignations), which is a French public sector financial institution formed in 1816 that resides under the control of the Parliament.46

Figure 7: Shantytown in Nanterre, a western banlieue of Paris in 1958.47

The HLM system was formed in 1950 due to a shortage of housing. After World

War I ended, there was very little new construction. At the same time, a growing number of agricultural workers moved from the countryside to urban areas in search of industrial employment opportunities.48 Along with the immigrant patterns illustrated earlier, all of a sudden, France had a massive influx of immigrants working in the industrial world who

44 10 idées reçues sur les HLM, Union sociale pour l'habitat, February 2012. 45 Mathias Thépot, Où va vraiment l'argent du Livret A ?, La Tribune, 22 February 2012. 46 Article L. 518-4 of the French Monetary and Financial Code 47 Christian Horn. “La Défense, A Unique Business District –France.” Urban Planet. 01 January 2014. Web. http://urbanplanet.info/urbanism/la-defense-unique-business-district/. 48Pierre Sorlin. "'Stop the Rural Exodus': Images of the Country in French Films of the 1950s." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 2nd ser. 18 (1998). Web.

were living in squalor in the urban parts of France, notably Île-de-France. With little construction being built and a large number of immigrants to house, in 1956, minister Pierre Currant created a plan to build new HLM apartments in order to support this demanding need. This rapid construction was unprecedented and achieved unexpected success. By 1964, there were 95,000 new HLM apartments. -de-France. With little construction being built and a large number of immigrants to house, in 1956, minister Pierre Currant created a plan to build new HLM apartments in order to support this demanding need. This rapid construction was unprecedented and achieved unexpected success. By 1964, there were 95,000 new HLM apartments.49

By the late 1960s, the construction of HLM apartments’ shifted to the banlieues of Paris, in planned communities known as ZUP (zones á urbaniser en priorité or priority urban zones). They began to focus on building houses that were more livable than what was previously there, including facilities, such as toilets,50 and to put in programs to combat the high levels of poverty and unemployment within ZUP communities. However, these programs did little to change the exorbitant rates of unemployment within the banlieues, or more specifically, these cités HLM. Many of these ZUP communities have been deemed ZUS communities (zone urban sensible or sensitive urban zone) due to high unemployment, high percentage of public housing, and low percentage of students graduating high school.51 The construction of the HLM apartments came on the fringes of the increased immigrants from the Maghreb. Suddenly, the question became who is a good immigrant as opposed to how do we get more immigrants to come to France.

Many of these ZUP communities existed outside of the periphery of major cities. In the case of Paris, there is a line that is drawn that marks the boundaries of the city. Beyond these boundaries, one is still a part of l’île de France, otherwise known as the

49 World Heritage Encyclopedia. National Public Library -EBooks Web. http://www.nationalpubliclibrary.org/articles/eng/HLM 50Ibid. 51 "Zone Urbaine Sensible/ZUS -Définition." INSEE. 13 Oct. 2016. Web. https://www.insee.fr/fr/metadonnees/definition/c1679.

Parisian Region. These cities that were created in the outskirts of Paris are basically “isolated urban enclaves.”“isolated urban enclaves.”52, primarily comprised of low-rent public housing. Dorrie Wilson in a talk at the James Baldwin conference housed at American University of Paris described the banlieues as a “border between the glitter of the metropolis and no-man’s land.”53 For there is a lack of job opportunities, a lack of proper education, and a lack of direct access to the city of Paris where there are jobs.

Figure 8: RER Paris Map

In order to get to the banlieues, one must take the RER, “Résau Express

Regional” (Regional Express Network), which connects Paris to its banlieues. The RER

52Clare Foran. "How France Built Inequality Into Its Cities." CityLab. N.p., 20 Nov. 2012. Web. 05 Apr. 2017. http://www.citylab.com/politics/2012/11/how-france-built-discrimation-itscities/ 3881/. 53 Dorrie Wilson. Independent Researcher/Specialist on French Hip Hop Culture. “The City of Light in Afraid of the Dark: James Baldwin, Citizenship and Contemporary Belgium and France.” Talk given on Saturday, May 28, 2016 in Paris, France, hosted by the American University of Paris.

exists within major stops of Paris. One could take the RER within Paris if they felt the need to but this would almost never happen given that Paris is a very well connected and modern metro city. The RER is distinguished from the metro and has its own separate price. If one were to be traveling from one end of Paris to the other, it would be the same ticket. If one were to be traveling from any part of Paris to just outside of Paris, they would have to get to a train stop where there is a RER and then take the RER to go out to the banlieues, having to pay two fares. This is the most ridiculous part of the RER system for it very clearly creates a distinction between those “within” and those on the “fringes” of society. Given the high rate of unemployment and poverty in the banlieues of Paris, the French government manages to maintain this power by forcing people who live outside of Paris to use multiple tickets. The French government argues that one could avoid this by buying a Navigo Pass, which covers all zones of the region. However, this is assuming that individuals can pay for a monthly-unlimited metro pass. I received a 35need to but this would almost never happen given that Paris is a very well connected and modern metro city. The RER is distinguished from the metro and has its own separate price. If one were to be traveling from one end of Paris to the other, it would be the same ticket. If one were to be traveling from any part of Paris to just outside of Paris, they would have to get to a train stop where there is a RER and then take the RER to go out to the banlieues, having to pay two fares. This is the most ridiculous part of the RER system for it very clearly creates a distinction between those “within” and those on the “fringes” of society. Given the high rate of unemployment and poverty in the banlieues of Paris, the French government manages to maintain this power by forcing people who live outside of Paris to use multiple tickets. The French government argues that one could avoid this by buying a Navigo Pass, which covers all zones of the region. However, this is assuming that individuals can pay for a monthly-unlimited metro pass. I received a 35euro fine for mistakenly using a regular train ticket instead of a ticket specifically for the banlieues along with 5 other people who were stopped in my train car. Although I was not from there, this made me feel as if I was being conned.

Figure 9: Map from Montreuil to Saint-Denis suburbs of Paris. Google Maps.

It is also important to note that all RER stations to the banlieues of Paris have to go through Paris. They do not connect to each other. This means that if you live in the Eastern banlieue of Montreuil and you wanted to get to the northern banlieue of St. Denis, you would have to pay two tickets and go through the Chatêlet train station in Paris to get there. This has a way of reminding those within the banlieues that their only hope is through central Paris and that their existence on the outskirts is heavily reliant upon central Paris. This also means that people will stay in leurs cités (their cities) because it is too expensive and time-consuming to get into the city or to other regions of Paris. Not only does one RER station encompass an entire neighborhood, often requiring people to walk 15 minutes or more to this station, the RER station gets them to major train stops in Paris where they are then expected to pay again to get anywhere else in Paris. The lack of accessibility and public transportation from Paris and its banlieues is a breeding ground for discontent. Not only do people live in subpar conditions, they have to try much harder to get a job than anyone else in the Paris region by paying higher prices to get to where the jobs are and dedicating more time to getting there. nt to note that all RER stations to the banlieues of Paris have to go through Paris. They do not connect to each other. This means that if you live in the Eastern banlieue of Montreuil and you wanted to get to the northern banlieue of St. Denis, you would have to pay two tickets and go through the Chatêlet train station in Paris to get there. This has a way of reminding those within the banlieues that their only hope is through central Paris and that their existence on the outskirts is heavily reliant upon central Paris. This also means that people will stay in leurs cités (their cities) because it is too expensive and time-consuming to get into the city or to other regions of Paris. Not only does one RER station encompass an entire neighborhood, often requiring people to walk 15 minutes or more to this station, the RER station gets them to major train stops in Paris where they are then expected to pay again to get anywhere else in Paris. The lack of accessibility and public transportation from Paris and its banlieues is a breeding ground for discontent. Not only do people live in subpar conditions, they have to try much harder to get a job than anyone else in the Paris region by paying higher prices to get to where the jobs are and dedicating more time to getting there.

Youth disparaged by the lack of employment in their neighborhoods are even more disparaged and angered by the police presence within their neighborhoods. ZUP neighborhoods are known for high unemployment rates but they are also known for high level of police officers within these neighborhoods. In La France nous a lachés-le sentiment d’injustice chez les jeunes des cités (France let us go-sentiments of injustice among the youth of the ghettos), Eric Marlière asks the youth within the banlieues what they think of the police. Quickly, the storyline that dominates was a sense of fear and the need for protection amongst the youth from the police. A 19-year old of Algerian-descent said, “Je ne sais plus, je crois que c’est une texte de rap qui dit ça: La police nous protége mais qui nous protégée de la police?…Je crois que c’est pas faux quand j’y pense, surtout nous, les Arabes.” t ça: La police nous protége mais qui nous protégée de la police?…Je crois que c’est pas faux quand j’y pense, surtout nous, les Arabes.”54This feeling of fear is a feeling of lawlessness amongst the youth of the banlieues. Where this young person is from, there is no one protecting him from the police and it is therefore up to him to be the law and order. Another young man of Algerian origins said, “La police, pour nous, c’est des haggard (méchant). Ils viennent; ils nous foillent, ils nous insultent de crouilles ou de bicots dans la cité. On dirait qu’ils attendent que ça! Ils chercent la merdre, voilà!”55 For this youth, he constantly experiences police harassment. In the eyes of the police, all youth of the banlieues are the same. They are all into drug trafficking, delinquencies, and violence.56 The way the police react with the youth of the banlieues is clouded in racism and stereotypes. It is often manifested in physical and mental destruction of the youth of the banlieues.

The dangerous effect this maltreatment of the youth of the banlieues can have is demonstrated in La Haine. The movie centers on a police gun that was left behind during a night of riots after a Maghreb was beaten so badly by the police that he ended up in the hospital. Towards the middle of La Haine, the three protagonists, Vinz, Hubert, and Said, exit a rich friend’s home in Paris and are met with hostile police officers curious about what they are doing there. Vinz manages to outrun the police, leaving his two friends behind. The following scene has Hubert and Said tied to chairs where they are harassed

54 Maliere, 41. Trans. “I no longer know, I think that there is a rap lyric that says: The police protects us but who protects us from the police? I think this is not wrong when one thinks, especially us, Arabs. 55 Maliere, 35. Trans. Police, for us, are mean. They come; they fool with us, they insult us by calling us the balls or the (Derogatory word for Arabs) in the hood. They would say that they wait for that! They search for the worst, voila! 56 Éric Marlière, La France Nous A Lachés! (Fayard:2008), 21.

and abused by police officers.

Figure 10: La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz

In this scene, you see one officer gripping the two in a tight headlock. Soon, he will release his chokehold and then do it again repeatedly. He will also proceed to pour beer onto Hubert’s face although we know that Hubert is Muslim and that the police officer has assumed that Hubert is Muslim. Given that alcohol is forbidden in Islam, this is an egregious act by the police officer in order to assert his power over their bodies. One could also argue that it is also forcing French secular ideals literally down Hubert’s throat. By having the state pour alcohol down the throat of a Muslim, it associates certain ideals with the state. In this instance, one could argue that drinking alcohol is “French” and not drinking alcohol is not French. It is significant here that the two people apprehended and abused by the police are two men of African-descent. Hubert being West African and Saïd North African, I argue that within this scene, Mathieu Kassovitz reminds us that the youth of the banlieue are targeted by the police and that youth of African-descent are disproportionately targeted. The ending of this film is telling of how, although Vinz is white, he is also a part of the “struggle”.

This struggle culminates in the last scene of La Haine. Vinz struggles throughout the movie with what to do with the missing police gun in his possession but after Hubert convinces him that “hatred breeds hatred” and nothing good can come out of it, he hands the gun over to Hubert. m that “hatred breeds hatred” and nothing good can come out of it, he hands the gun over to Hubert.

Figure 11: The End Scene. La Haine. Dir. Matthieu Kassovitz. Video.

They are all walking back to their respective homes in the banlieue when police officers automatically jump out of a cop car and begin to beat them up. Gripped with power, one of the police officers calls Vinz a “fuck” and says “you don’t have your friends to protect you now.”57 The police officer holds a gun to Vinz’ head and while laughing, his gun goes off. He just shot Vinz in the face. A clock-ticking sound commences and Hubert holds the gun that Vinz had given him up to the head of the police officer.

Throughout the film, Hubert was seen as the more peaceful one who was willing to fight with his friends but was just as willing to quell arguments between police officers and the youth. It is important that it ends with Hubert, a black man who always avoided violence out of fear of its repercussions, holding the gun to the head of the police officer. At that moment, the previous power dynamic is dismantled. Now, there is only survival. For Hubert, his hatred for the police is in direct response to the murder of his white friend by the police and the series of injustices caused by the police he has faced throughout his

57Dir. Matthieu Kassovitz. La Haine,1995. Ending Scene. life. The relationship between Vinz and his best friends of African-descent leads us to believe that there must be a geographical identity that goes beyond race, a common understanding of a shared plight. Although Vinz exercises privileges as a white man, he does live on the outskirts of society, therefore having a role in this “banlieue identity”. -descent leads us to believe that there must be a geographical identity that goes beyond race, a common understanding of a shared plight. Although Vinz exercises privileges as a white man, he does live on the outskirts of society, therefore having a role in this “banlieue identity”.

Navigating Whiteness in the Banlieues

Although the banlieues of Paris are often comprised of people of color, there is a significant amount of white people who have either emigrated from other parts of Europe or are of French-descent and live in the banlieues. The question of their identity can be complicated as they too live on the fringes of cities and grew up within the conditions of their black and Arab friends. Kerry James, a French rapper of Guadeloupian and Haitian descent, has the follow lyric in his song Banlieusards: “C’est 1 pour les miens, Arabes et noirs pour la plupart/Et pour mes babtous, prolétaires et banlieusards”58 Here, he references “babtous”, which is slang for toubab, which is a Central and West African name for a white person. By saying “my toubab”, Kerry James makes sure to separate his people (Arabs and Blacks) and white people of the banlieues but also makes sure to let the audience know that he claims the white people who live in the banlieue and who surround him and his people. They are the whites that are a part of the struggle. They are also the whites that would go on to be the pioneers of rap music in France.

From the banlieues emerged a shared identity that incorporated a mixture of cultures into one. We see with words, such as “babtous”, that slang of the banlieue is not

58 Kery James, “Banlieusards” Genius. https://genius.com/4617488. Trans. “It’s #1 for mine, Arabs et Blacks for the most part/ And for my whites, proletariats, and those who live in the Banlieues.”

purely French slang but also incorporates different African dialects and Arabic words into it. La Haine portrays Vinz, a white man, as someone who is also part of the struggle living in the banlieues with his West African and Maghreb friend. This is something that we rarely see in the United States except for 8-mile where Eminem is trying to prove his credibility in the rap game as a white man. This does not happen in France and is an interesting difference to what we see happening in the United States. Whites occupy a space in France where they can talk about the “struggle,” especially addressing police brutality and delinquent activities associated with the banlieues. g but also incorporates different African dialects and Arabic words into it. La Haine portrays Vinz, a white man, as someone who is also part of the struggle living in the banlieues with his West African and Maghreb friend. This is something that we rarely see in the United States except for 8-mile where Eminem is trying to prove his credibility in the rap game as a white man. This does not happen in France and is an interesting difference to what we see happening in the United States. Whites occupy a space in France where they can talk about the “struggle,” especially addressing police brutality and delinquent activities associated with the banlieues.

At the same time, there is a line drawn. Whites in the banlieues also understand that their banlieue identity is different than the cultural identity from their Black and Maghreb friends. They are expected to understand that their last names are not preventing them from a job or the color of their skin is not why they are targeted by the police. In addition, they must also understand that their bodies can move freely through France in a way that the bodies of their West African and Maghreb friends cannot. The privilege of their skin shapes their identities when they enter Paris and for that, their identity as white gives them privileges. Even with this privilege, white people living in the banlieues do consider themselves a part of a community on the fringes of society because of their location.

Vinz, a white man, has “La Haine” (“Hatred”) for the system and hangs around exclusively people of color. By experiencing aspects of the violence of the system of oppression, French white individuals have carved themselves within a ‘banlieue’ identity. Given that hip-hop emerged amongst the oppressed, with this arose an acceptable niche of white people in French rap. This acceptance of whiteness in French rap does not exist in the United States. I believe that this is in large part due to how hip-hop has become associated with plight and community in France. Given urbanization in France, there is a space that has been carved out to include white people within this communal plight based on geographical location. The importance of geography in creating this space for white people is crucial to understanding the role whiteness plays in the rap game in France. Understanding how the banlieues came to be as well as understanding what it means to be French complicates the significance of the emergence of hip-hop in France. -hop has become associated with plight and community in France. Given urbanization in France, there is a space that has been carved out to include white people within this communal plight based on geographical location. The importance of geography in creating this space for white people is crucial to understanding the role whiteness plays in the rap game in France. Understanding how the banlieues came to be as well as understanding what it means to be French complicates the significance of the emergence of hip-hop in France.

NTM and IAM, artists I explore later in this thesis, emerged from these spaces of survival, hatred of the police, and disdain for the establishment. The history of urbanization in France I have tackled within this chapter allows us to better contextualize the importance of how hip-hop took shape in France. In the following chapter, I seek to tackle the emergence of hip-hop in both the U.S. and in France, see the commonalities and differences between the two, and finally use this knowledge to present my ethnographic work while in France. I also tackle what it means to be white in rap and although it is accepted in France, how this acceptance cuts off rap from its roots. With a preliminary understanding of the emergence of the banlieues and specifically, the relationship between the people within those spaces and the police, one has a greater understanding of the climate of France and its banlieues when hip-hop came on the scene.

Chapter 2: How Do We Contest our Entrapment?

I recently travelled to the Trinity College Hip-Hop Festival in April of 2017 with my school’s hip-hop dance group, NBC. The group had never travelled for a performance. Although members of the group were used to watching choreographed dances from LA dance studios on YouTube and shows like So You Think You Can Dance where hip-hop was always featured at least once during a show cycle, not a single person had gone to a dance battle. A true dance battle where the audience creates a wide circle and those competing freestyled in the middle in small teams of two or three people. They had never witnessed in real life the energy, the rawness, and the collaborative nature of hip-hop. How can we have a team of hip-hop dancers who have no idea what hip-hop is? Within his thesis project, I had to ask myself the same question. -Hop Festival in April of 2017 with my school’s hip-hop dance group, NBC. The group had never travelled for a performance. Although members of the group were used to watching choreographed dances from LA dance studios on YouTube and shows like So You Think You Can Dance where hip-hop was always featured at least once during a show cycle, not a single person had gone to a dance battle. A true dance battle where the audience creates a wide circle and those competing freestyled in the middle in small teams of two or three people. They had never witnessed in real life the energy, the rawness, and the collaborative nature of hip-hop. How can we have a team of hip-hop dancers who have no idea what hip-hop is? Within his thesis project, I had to ask myself the same question.

I had to rewind the clock and dive into the roots of hip-hop before I could begin talking about how the youth of the banlieues interpreted the cultural phenomenon. In order to explain the now, one must explain what came before. In this chapter, I seek to tie the history of hip-hop in both the U.S. and France to my experiences in Paris with hip- hop. It is significant that hip-hop was founded by Black people living in the South Bronx. When one recognizes that the origins of rap music emerged in the “de-industrialization meltdown of social alienation, prophetic imagination and yearning”59 as academic scholar Tricia Rose says, one can understand why hip-hop would emerge in the banlieues of Paris. It is equally important to recognize that the pioneers of rap in France were not black people living in the South Bronx but often white men. What does it mean to have a phenomenon, such as hip-hop, which was created by marginalized black youth to then go

59 Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. New Hampshire: Wesleyan, 1994. Print. 21. global and include white rappers as well?

In this chapter, I will historicize hip-hop in the Bronx and France. Then, I will tackle why whiteness in French rap has become so accepted and challenge this acceptance. Finally, I will dive into my ethnographic work in Paris, looking at how hip- hop artists used space, dress, and the audience. By giving a historical background to hip- hop, one is better equipped to look at the significance of my ethnographic work. This background allows us to see that hip-hop is an art form but more than that, the phenomenon has the “capacity to encode the winds of resistance that blow and sometimes swirl among people struggling to survive and flourish amid states of disorder and deadly regimentation.”60 I found through my research that hip-hop emerged through struggle amongst black and brown bodies in the South Bronx.

The globalization of this struggle eventually allowed hip-hop to take hold in France but the banlieue identity created a window that allowed for white people to join this struggle. In this instance, rap amongst white people in France, as well as hip-hop dance, is not seen as appropriation. I argue that the problem here is that it drives the attention away from black and brown bodies in France who, although are also a part of this geographical banlieue identity, have an added layer of racism that cannot be confined to a geographical location. By understanding why and how hip-hop emerged, I am able to think more critically of white rappers in France and their notion of ‘belonging’ to French hip-hop.

60 Theophus Harold Smith. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Print. 108.

Amongst the Rubble, Hip-Hop Emerged -Hop Emerged

In the U.S., hip-hop had a clear start. In the South Bronx amidst chaos, police violence, and increasing gang activity in the early 1970s, DJS started to throw parties in order to create an oasis for their communities. Eventually, the music styles evolved, dance styles emerged, and the cult of graffiti exploded, spreading what would later be deemed “hip-hop” culture beyond the walls of the Bronx. In the United States, hip-hop spread from within the ghetto. In France, hip-hop emerged outside of the ghetto and over time, grew powerful within the ghettos, re-emerging on the scene as a symptom of “les cités” or “the hood”.

Figure 12: Mel Rosenthal: Photographs from ‘In the South Bronx of America’. Museum of the City of New

York61 When hip-hop first appeared, it was the ‘70s and while the disco/funk movement was exploding in the East village, the Bronx was burning. At the time hip-hop was

61 Eddie Small. “See Stirring Photos of the South Bronx from the 1970s and 1980s. 3 June 2016. Web. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160603/claremont/slideshow-see-stirring-photosof- south-bronx-from-1970s-1980s. emerging, gang wars, burning buildings, and police brutality categorized the South Bronx. The Bronx became iconic for the phrase, “The Bronx is Burning”, which an ABC sports commentator allegedly uttered during game two of the 1977 World Series in the South Bronx. Bronx. The Bronx became iconic for the phrase, “The Bronx is Burning”, which an ABC sports commentator allegedly uttered during game two of the 1977 World Series in the South Bronx.62 These words were said after an aerial plane recording the game panned a few blocks over Yankee Stadium to see a building on fire. Although this had become quite normal in the South Bronx, it was not until this moment where “the Bronx is burning” became a nationally well-known phrase. Leading up to the 1970s, in an effort to revive neighborhoods that were deemed “eyesores”, the government decided to completely uproot poor black urban communities.63 The demolition of affordable housing without any new construction led to a massive displacement of poor black people.

This meant that the number of occupants within one household spiked as families and friends consolidated into one apartment. Although there was this push of urban renewal, at the same time, fire departments were being shut down in the South Bronx. Their reasoning was based on a model that tested response times of fire departments, leading to them declaring several fire departments as inept.64 With no-question-asked fire insurance for landlords in fire prone neighborhoods and a reduction of firefighters coming to help, both vacant and occupied buildings began to burn to the ground.65 The destruction of communities and the decay that resulted from buildings in rubble created a sense of hopelessness amongst the poor black communities. The South Bronx in the 1970s was nothing short of the intermingling of urban “renewal” and urban “decay”. 62 Joe Flood. “Why the Bronx Burned.” New York Post. 16 May 2010. Web. http://nypost.com/2010/05/16/why-the-bronx-burned/. 63 Tricia Rose. The Hip-Hop Wars. (Basic Books: New York, 2008), 44. 64 Joe Flood. “Why the Bronx Burned.” http://nypost.com/2010/05/16/why-the-bronxburned/. 65 Ibid.

Figure 13: The War on Drugs, 40 years later. CNN. Web. Video.

Nixon’s “War on Drugs” also marked the 1970s. In June 1971, Nixon declared that “drug abuse” was public enemy number one.66 It was in 1970 that police were also allowed to start conducting “no-knock” searches.67 This meant that police officers now had the ability to enter people’s homes without any forewarning aka conduct raids on people’s homes. The police now had to defend America from public-enemy number one, which meant using “drugs” as code for “black.” As a result, the police presence within neighborhoods such as the South Bronx rapidly increased. With a heightened police presence and their communities being burned to the ground, young people needed an outlet to express themselves. When they wanted to turn to music, their after-school music and art programs were defunded. With nowhere to turn, DJ Kool Herc pulled out his turntables and took the music to the streets. Amongst the rubble, hip-hop emerged. It is undeniable that hip-hop grew from

66 “Thirty Years of America’s Drug War: A Chronology.” PBS. Web. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/cron/. 67 Ibid. depths of African-American music and can be seen as a conglomerate of disco, street funk, radio DJS, and poets, such as Gil Scott-Heron. -American music and can be seen as a conglomerate of disco, street funk, radio DJS, and poets, such as Gil Scott-Heron.68 There were several individuals who pioneered hip-hop, notably DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambatta. DJ Kool Herc created the two-turntable technique.69

Figure 14: DJ Kool Herc performing his “Merry Go Round” Technique. Youtube. Web. Video.

Some say that DJ Kool Herc’s party in the basement of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx in 1973 is the “birth certificate” of hip-hop.70 His two-turntable technique was revolutionary because he could “extend the percussion break by playing a second copy of the same record on the turntable as soon as the break had finished on the other deck”, thereby creating a breakbeat.71 This then led to the genesis of breakdancing as people moved and danced to a repetitive yet dynamic beat. In terms of the environment that was

68 Marcyliena Morgan and Dionne Bennett. “Hip-Hop & The Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form” The American Academy of Arts & Science. Spring 2011, Vol.140. No.2, 181 69 Christopher Malone and George Martinez. The Organic Globalizer: Hip Hop, Political Development, and Movement Culture. London:Bloomsbury Academy, 2014. Print. 70 Angus Batey. “Hip-hop’s Superstars Owe DJ Kool Herc More than Just Respect.” The Guardian. 01 Feb, 2011. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/feb/01/hip-hop-dj-kool-herc. 71 Ibid.

created by DJ Kool Herc, his parties were spaces where “beefs” were dropped, violence ended at the door, and people just danced. ated by DJ Kool Herc, his parties were spaces where “beefs” were dropped, violence ended at the door, and people just danced.72 Amidst the gang rivalries and the police brutality outside of DJ Kool Herc’s parties, inside was an oasis.

Around the same time, Afrika Bambatta emerged on the scene. Former gang member, Bambatta sought to create a space for the youth of the Bronx outside of gang- affiliated activity. He started the Universal Zulu Nation to “raise awareness of the scourge of gang violence in New York’s ghettos, and to turn young males away from what the rap industry would later call the thug life.”73 Although there is a strong irony in the fact that the reasons hip-hop was created in the first place was to combat what mainstream rap would later put on a pedestal, it is clear here that Bambatta’s intention was to find a relief from the plight of the everyday reality for young men of color in the ghettos of New York.

Afrika Bambatta and DJ Kool Herc pioneered hip-hop but were quickly followed by other artists re-inventing the art of djing. Two of those people were Grand Wizard Theodore of Fantastic Five, who invented the scratching technique, and Grandmaster Flash, who “turned the turntables into an instrument.”74 According to Hip Hop Evolution, Grandmaster Flash cut the beat as if he was editing the music by playing the break on one record while using the back-spin technique to find that same spot of music on the other record, which became known as the backspin technique.75 This is memorably noted in The Get-Down, a Netflix original documentary, where young children learn to DJ by finding the break in a song using the backspin and marking that spot with a marker. By

72 The Organic Globalizer: Hip Hop, Political Development, and Movement Culture. Print. 73 Ibid. 74 Dir. Darby Wheeler and Sam Dunn. “Hip Hop Evolution.” Netflix. 2016. Video. 75 Ibid.

being able to mark the spot, they were able to go back to that point at any time and truly transform the turntables into an instrument. Music critic and author Nelson George brilliantly describes the genius of Grandmaster Flash’s technique. transform the turntables into an instrument. Music critic and author Nelson George brilliantly describes the genius of Grandmaster Flash’s technique.

It begins with “you say one for the trouble,” the opening phrase of Spoonie Gee’s “Monster Jam,” broken down to “you say” repeated seven times, setting the tone for a record that uses the music and vocals of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” the Sugar Hill Gang’s “8th Wonder,” and Chic’s “Good Times” as musical pawns that Flash manipulates at whim…His bass thumps, and the Furious Five chant, “Grant-master cuts faster.” Bass. “Grandmaster.” Bass. “Cut.” Bass. “Cuts…cuts…faster.” But the cold crusher comes toward the end when, during “8th Wonder” Flash places a wheezing sound of needle on vinyl in the spaces separating a series of claps.76

Grandmaster Flash’s style re-shapes and morphs the way one thinks of not only words but also musical beats. The weaving of a variety of songs into one piece creates a music form that is constantly breaking down beats/lyrics and re-constructing them anew. Before there was Grandmaster Flash, there was Grand Wizard Theodore of Fantastic Five who invented the scratching technique, and the “needle drop”.77 Scratching is when a DJ moves a vinyl back and forth in order to create rhythmic sounds. Grand Wizard Theodore described scratching as, “nothing but the back-cuing that you hear in your ear before you push it [the recorded sound] of the crowd”.78 He often says he discovered it by accident but his scratching technique has allowed DJs with turntables to do what they do now, along with his needle drop technique, which is when the DJ drops the needle exactly when they want the playback to begin on one record.79 This technique was then taken by Grandmaster Flash who made an art out of Grand Wizard Theodore’s scratching

76 Nelson George et al., eds., Fresh: Hip Hop Don’t Stop. New York: Random House, 1985. 67. 77 Ibid. 78 David Toop, Rap Attack 2: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. New York: Serpent’s Tail, 1991. 12. 79 Ibid.

technique and added on a perfected version of the backspin technique. Tricia Rose calls these techniques a conjuring and a razing in one stroke, both “deconstructive” and “recuperative”. these techniques a conjuring and a razing in one stroke, both “deconstructive” and “recuperative”.80 One sees in these techniques a way of taking what one has, building off of it, and reinventing. These black artists creating a new world of music based on deconstructing songs they already had is revolutionary at its essence. In a hopeless world full of passions and fury, hip-hop techniques reflected the desire amongst residents of the South Bronx to shape their own lives and build from the ground up. As these techniques emerged throughout the 1970s, hip-hop’s flame intensified.

Christopher Malone & George Martinez, Jr. argue that Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was the cataclysm for hip-hop. On January 5, 1980, “Rapper’s Delight" became the first hip-hop single to ever reach the Billboard top 40.81 It was also one of the most pirated disks ever, which is why it quickly spread around the world.82 From that moment on, hip-hop spread like wildfire throughout the states. The pirated disks of “Rapper’s Delight” soon travelled beyond the states, eventually reaching Europe. It was in the early 1980s that rap music first reached the streets of Paris, France with Rapper’s Delight staying on France’s “Top 30” charts for six months.83

In 1982, the French radio network Europe 1 sponsored the New York City Rap tour, which brought important American hip-hop artists to France, such as Afrika

80 Tricia Rose, Black Noise, 65. 81 “The Sugerhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’ becomes hip-hop’s first Top 40 Hit.” History. Web. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-sugarhill-gangs-rappers-delight-becomeshiphops- first-top-40-hit. 82 AureÌlie Clemente Ruiz,. “Hip Hop: Du Bronx Aux Rues Arabes” N.p.: Snoeck Gent, 2015. Print.

83 Karim Hammou. Une Histoire du Rap en France. Paris: La Découverte. 2012. Print.

Bambataa, Fab 5 Freddy, and the Rock Steady Crew.5 Freddy, and the Rock Steady Crew.84 Hip-hop quickly grew in popularity and began to dominate the night scene in historic venues, such as Le Bataclan, which is located in the 10th arrondissement of Paris.85 Dancers would come to Le Bataclan86 and dance to the sampling and scratching methods, pioneered by those in the Bronx, NYC.87 This then moved to the streets of Les Halles or Champs-Élysées where people break danced on the street to these new American tracks. It was the show, H.I.P.H.O.P., hosted by Sidney on Radio 7 and TF1 sparked the hip-hop music scene in Paris.

Figure 15: H.I.P.H.O.P. with Sidney. Youtube. Video. Web.

H.I.P.H.O.P is a crucial moment in time for hip-hop in France. The host, Sidney, was born Patrick Duteil in 1955. From Guadeloupian origins, he grew up in Argenteuil, 84 Hip-Hop and the Global Imprint of a Black Cultural Form, 184. 85 Hélène Taddei-Lawson,. "Le Mouvement Hip Hop." Insistance. 2005. 187-93.

86 Le Bataclan is where the November 2015 Paris attacks where a series of coordinated terrorist attacks hit Paris, France, gunning down 89 people within Le Bataclan, a concert venue for all different genres. 87 Ibid. Val-d’Oise, a northwestern banlieue of Paris, France.-d’Oise, a northwestern banlieue of Paris, France.88 The show, H.I.P.H.O.P. was the first regular nationwide television show in the world to be dedicated to hip-hop culture.89 In 1984, the show premiered on TF1 every Sunday afternoon. Sidney would speak mainly in French, presenting his guests, rapping occasionally, and breaking down the new dance moves to grace the scene. Sidney made sure to focus on the moves as much as the words. “Ces productions électro-funk sont souvent rappées, mais le type d’interprétation est alors moins objet d’attention que les formes de danse associées à ces musiques: les termes “smurf”, “breakdance”, “hiphop” viennent décrire de nouvelles danse que popularise l’émission H.I.P.H.O.P., animée par Sidney et diffusée les dimanches sur TF1 à partir du début de l’année 1984.”90 Sidney’s show was dynamic and managed to capture not only the biggest hits but also show the world the new dance crazes as well. This put hip-hop on the French TV screen, spreading the movement across the country.

In the same year, Dee Nasty emerged on the scene. Dee Nasty, born Daniel Bourgeault, is known as the Parisian father of hip-hop. This is because Dee Nasty produced France’s first hip-hop record, “Panam City Rappin”, in 1984.91 Dee Nasty recalls handing out his disc hand-by-hand to individuals at the club, Le Bataclan and from there, it caught on.92 He is not only known for creating the first hip-hop record in

88 Mark Schwartz. “Planet Rock: Hip Hop Supa National.” The Vibe History of Hip Hop. 89 Yasmina Benbekaï et La Caution. “H.I.P. H.O.P. (avec Sidney).” Mouv.fr. http://www.mouv.fr/diffusion-hip-hop-avec-sidney. 90 Karim Hammou. Une Histoire du Rap en France. Paris: La Découverte, 2012. 25. The productions of electro-funk are often rapped, but the type of interpretation is more focused on the forms of dance associated with the music: the terms, “smurf”, “breakdance”, “hiphop” came to describe the new dances, which were popularized in the show H.I.P.H.O.P., hosted by Sidney and broadcasted on Sundays on TF1 starting in 1984”. 91 Une histoire du Rap en France, 59. 92 Ibid.

French, he was also known for practicing sampling and scratching on Radio Nova., he was also known for practicing sampling and scratching on Radio Nova.93 Radio Nova was created in 1981 to highlight underground artists in jazz, hip-hop, and reggae.94 With this in mind, Dee Nasty used Radio Nova as his playground and established his career as a DJ while doing so. Quite significantly, Dee Nasty was a white man of French origins living in Paris. This is quite a jump from those who pioneered hip- hop in the South Bronx.

Hip-Hop in the club scene, at first, centered in Paris and for Parisians. The crowds were often white, sometimes denying entrance to black people. Paris clubs, such as Le Palace, Les Bains Douches, and Le Colony were known for their discrimination. They would lie out specific times for “black parties”. These spaces were “ Approfondir collectivement son gôut pour le rap ainsi de trouver les lieux spécifiques conditionnés par la discrimination raciste (soirées “black”, boîte de nuit acceptant les public minoritaires), ou construits en réponse à cette discrimination (notamment les après-midi et soirées hors des discothèques)”.95 Some clubs were discriminatory against people of color but had no problem giving black people a select time to occupy a space that did not belong to them. There were other clubs who would play rap music but would not let black people into those spaces at all. As Phillipe Barney said, “la discothèque parisienne La Scala, où il mixe vers 1983, ‘ne laissait pas entrer les Noirs, alors que la musique qui était là c’était que black”.96 In sum, black people had to find their space outside of where hip-hop was

93 Le Mouvement Hip-Hop. 94 L’Histoire du Rap, 52. 95 L’Histoire du Rap, 57. “To collectively deepen their taste for rap and to find specific places conditioned by racism (black parties, nightclubs that accepted minority audiences), or constructed in response to this discrimination (notably the afternoons and evening hours of the clubs).” 96 L’Histoire du Rap, 55.

emerging in order to fully delve into the phenomenon.

As a white French man, Dee Nasty played a role in creating that space along with other DJS, like DJ Chabin.97 They started throwing block parties in l’Île–de-France, which included the banlieues of Paris.98 At these block parties, he would bring his turntables and people would breakdance. This is very similar to how hip-hop first emerged in the Bronx where DJS threw block parties and brought huge speakers and turntables. Although it took the center of Paris to get hip-hop on the scene in France, it was the individuals who left the center of Paris for the banlieues that pioneered the movement. The movement grew as people began to become more aware of hip-hop then quickly taking hold in the banlieues.

Figure 16: Tagged Metro Train Car. Web. 99

Though hip-hop was catching on in Paris through Sugarhill Gang and Sidney, it

“the Paris club La Scala, where they mixed around 1983, ‘did not let Black people enter, while the music there was black” 97 DJ Chabin, ambianceur des breakdancers. Le Parisien. 26 novembre 2016. Web. http://www.leparisien.fr/espace-premium/seine-et-marne-77/dj-chabin-ambianceur-desbreakdancers- 26-11-2016-6376155.php. 98 Dee Nast 1986 Paris Bloc Party. Youtube. 27 Mar. 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkIj-_Ek-eU.

99 Graffiti 80s old school. https://kaliptikal.com/tag/paris/. really took hold in the 1990’s. Karim Hammou recognizes 1989 as the critical moment when hip-hop went from being cool to a public menace. This is due to the rise of graffiti. In 1985, Le Figaro newspaper described “Paris comme ‘tatoué’ par une ‘succession de figures hideuses, monstreuses, incohérentes, executes à la bombe.” when hip-hop went from being cool to a public menace. This is due to the rise of graffiti. In 1985, Le Figaro newspaper described “Paris comme ‘tatoué’ par une ‘succession de figures hideuses, monstreuses, incohérentes, executes à la bombe.”100 The world of graffiti had placed hip-hop culture on the forefront. There were no designated “black hours” or designated spaces for black people to come together and listen to hip-hop music. Tagging101 took place in all public spaces; the metro station, stop signs, doors of fancy Parisian apartment buildings, and storefronts to name a few. This angered the city as they saw hip-hop as an intrusion of culture into spaces that did not belong to it. The city was now on a mission to clean up Paris, and in conjunction to clean up hip-hop. From the 1990s onward, hip-hop in Paris symbolized destruction, chaos, invasion, and disorder. In the eyes of the French government, the 1990s hip-hop scene in Paris was neither ‘deconstructive’ or ‘reconstructive as Tricia Rose describes. The government failed to realize that by taking up space through tagging, dance, and music, those who live in the banlieues were able to reconstruct their sense of belonging. Although hip-hop had a presence in the banlieues in the ‘80s, it was the ‘90s that established the strong lineage between rap and the banlieues due to IAM and Suprême NTM, who were seen as the pioneers of a new “hip-hop”.

IAM hit the scene in 1993 with Ombre est Lumière, which was an absolute success.102

100 L’Histoire du Rap, 72.

“Paris as tattooed by a succession of hideous, monstrous, incoherent figures, executed with a bomb”. 101 Tagging is a form of graffiti where an individual writes their name, often on a public surface. 102 Emmanuelle Carinos. “Playlist: IAM, Pioneers of French Rap”. French Embassy in the United

IAM was originally comprised of Akhenaton (Phillipe Fragile), Shurik’n (Geoffrey Mussard), Kheops (Eric Mazel), Imhotep (Pascal Perez), Kephren (François Mendy), and Freeman (Malek Brahimi). The group’s exposure to hip-hop started with Akhenaton who lived in Brooklyn with his family and there met the early pioneers of hip-hop music before moving back to France. The group started in Marseille and had an absolute fascination with Ancient Egypt and Africa, hence their stage names. Akthenaton is a white man who grew up in the outskirts of Marseille to parents of Italian origin. Shurik’N grew up in Bouches-du-Rhône of Moroccan and Réunion-descent, which is a French overseas department in an island in the Indian Ocean. Imhotep and Freeman are both of Algerian-descent and Kephren is of Senegalese-descent. I mention their origins because it is important to note that while not all of IAM have non-French origins, the majority of the group comes from countries formerly under French colonial rule. This is significant as I will later speak to the effects of colonialism in the banlieues and the voice hip-hop gives to those on the fringes of society. n (Phillipe Fragile), Shurik’n (Geoffrey Mussard), Kheops (Eric Mazel), Imhotep (Pascal Perez), Kephren (François Mendy), and Freeman (Malek Brahimi). The group’s exposure to hip-hop started with Akhenaton who lived in Brooklyn with his family and there met the early pioneers of hip-hop music before moving back to France. The group started in Marseille and had an absolute fascination with Ancient Egypt and Africa, hence their stage names. Akthenaton is a white man who grew up in the outskirts of Marseille to parents of Italian origin. Shurik’N grew up in Bouches-du-Rhône of Moroccan and Réunion-descent, which is a French overseas department in an island in the Indian Ocean. Imhotep and Freeman are both of Algerian-descent and Kephren is of Senegalese-descent. I mention their origins because it is important to note that while not all of IAM have non-French origins, the majority of the group comes from countries formerly under French colonial rule. This is significant as I will later speak to the effects of colonialism in the banlieues and the voice hip-hop gives to those on the fringes of society.

Akhenaton was deemed a hip-hop theorist when he released an essay, la deuxieme génération du hip-hop (the second generation of hip-hop) in 1988.103 He also recently curated an exhibition at The Arab World Institute in the 5th arrondissement titled HIP-HOP du Bronx aux rues Arabes. “The show walks the viewer through the emergence of hip-hop in the Bronx and then touches on North African and Middle Eastern MCees and finally ends with contemporary Arab rappers, such as Deeb and Shadia Mansour.”104 The

States. http://frenchculture.org/music/blog/playlist-iam-pioneers-french-rap 103 “Akhenaton Bibliography”. Billboard. Web. http://www.billboard.com/artist/278236/akhenaton/biography. 104 Jeremy Allen. “Franco-Arabic Rappers in Paris.” Factmag. Web. http://www.factmag.com/2015/11/03/franco-arabic-rappers-in-paris/.

curating of an exhibition such as this one by a white French man attests to the respect people have for this veteran of the French rap game. This forces us to inquire whether these white French artists belong and if they should be the pioneers of French rap when it was an art form created by Black people or does globalization and French urbanization push us to abandon these questions? people have for this veteran of the French rap game. This forces us to inquire whether these white French artists belong and if they should be the pioneers of French rap when it was an art form created by Black people or does globalization and French urbanization push us to abandon these questions?

In Chapter 1 of my thesis, I discussed how the inclusion of white people in the banlieue identity allowed them to take up a significant amount of space in the French rap game. The reality is that many of the pioneers or members of the hardcore French rap groups were white. They were accepted as such because they understood what life was like in the “hood.” Thus their shared socio-economic status offered a type of authenticity to their hip-hop performance. I have a relatively large problem with this argument. The root of hip-hop laid in a marginalization of the poor but in the U.S., this poverty is inextricably linked to race and the plight of black and brown people.

Although white people do fit into a wedge of the banlieue identity because of this shared socio-economic plight, their acceptance in a very black phenomenon while living in very black neighborhoods attests to an appropriation of rap music. Given that the banlieues are comprised of many black and brown people and yet they were not the forefront of French hip-hop worries me. At the same time, this thesis has forced me to push my understandings of race in France by allowing me to understand why groups such as Suprême NTM and IAM could be as diverse as they were. The globalization of hip- hop allowed for people around the role to see a cultural phenomenon for the oppressed and apply it to their lives. With that said, although hip-hop will always belong to brown and black people, hip-hop could be utilized to speak the truth for those who feel marginalized but are neither Brown nor Black.

Suprême NTM originated in Seine-Saint-Denis the same year IAM emerged in Marseille. Saint-Denis is the roughest and largest banlieue of Paris. The work of Suprême NTM reflects this roughness; they take on an anti-police, anti-France form of conscious rap. The group consists of Joey Starr (Didier Morville), of Portuguese-descent, and Kool Shen (Bruno Lopes), of Martiniquian-descent. NTM stands for “Nique ta mère”, which means “Fuck Your Mother”. This phrase is French slang that you will hear too often. It is clear that NTM, as a group, represents the anger and hostility of the youth of Saint-Denis and more broadly, of the banlieues of Paris. As a hardcore rap group, they often speak out against social equality, racism, and are highly critical of the French police. Similarly to how NWA was treated in the states105, the French police actively tried to suppress NTM, taking them to court for “La Police,” which featured violent criticisms of the police.106 Some have even argued that NTM’s “Qu’est ce qu’on attend” was either the catalyst or anticipated the social riots in October 2005.107 These riots have had a lasting effect on the banlieues of Paris. It was also within these neighborhoods that rap groups rose and that competitive dance battling emerged. To explore this topic of dance battles, I

105“Retired Detroit Sergeant recalls telling N.W.A. they couldn’t play F**** tha Police at the 1989 concert.” Mlive. Web. http://www.mlive.com/news/annarbor/ index.ssf/2015/08/former_detroit_sergeant_recall.html.

In 1989, N.W.A. was requested to not play “F*** the Police” for it might incite violence at the Joe Louis Arena. When they did play it, cops jumped on stage to shut it down leading to an outbreak of chaos. Nine adults and nine juveniles were arrested on misdemeanor charges. Members of

N.W.A. were later arrested at their hotel. 106 Hisham Aidi. “Rap and radicalism: Does hip hop create extremists?” Al Jazeera. 28 January 2015. Web. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/01/rap-radicalism-hip-hopcreate- extremists-150128075110992.html. 107Paul Silverstein and Chantel Tetreault. “Urban Violence in France”. Middle East Research and Information Project. November 2005. Web. http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/urbanviolence- france will shift to my ethnographic research while in Paris.

Battles and Competitions on the borders of Paris

In January, I travelled to Paris, France. While there, I attended multiple dance battles, workshops, and conducted two interviews. Instead of speaking on each topic separately, I will split my ethnography into themes that have already come up within this chapter: Space, Journey, Dress, and Audience. Finally, I will explore my connection to the material and my experience as a researcher in these environments.

Figure 17: La Place Centre du Hip-Hop. January 2017.

Space

I decided to conduct all of my interviews in La Place Centre du Hip-Hop, which is where many dancers training in their art form come together. At first, I went there to study the place and to go to the Media library right across the hall. I soon discovered a plethora of dancers hanging out in the hallways with music blasting. People were locking, popping, breakdancing, and performing house style. Every type of hip-hop dance was present in this hallway.

At first, I was judgmental of the space. I questioned what it meant to have a space for hip-hop located at Châtelet-Les-Halles, the most populated and central space in Paris. Châtelet marked prestige. It marked where all of those on the outskirts of Paris had to literally reach on the R.E.R. in order to then go anywhere else in Paris. Châtelet signified a tourist trap, a place where people came to “experience” Paris. The classes at La Place Centre du Hip-Hop were expensive and the dance battles that took place there were also expensive. I thought this place challenged the authenticity of the underground hip-hop dance scene and was therefore not the best location for my interviews as I sought to fully immerse myself within the hip-hop dance community. The claiming of space in La Place Centre du Hip-Hop was notable and changed my perception. Although this space represented the commodification of hip-hop for an elite public, the underground rose and re-took this space by occupying its hallways. Dancers moved freely throughout the building being inside and outside at the same time. Although they were inside the building and freely dancing, they still remained outside the closed doors of expensive dance studios. The music being played was always a steady, rhythmic beat, which would allow the breakers and the lockers to dance to the same thing. People brought their own music, allowing them to blend the worlds of hip-hop together into a single location. Dancers from all around Paris gathered for free in the hallways of La Place Centre du Hip-Hop to practice and to learn from each other. They created a space entirely their own that the owners of the center not only allowed but encouraged.

Although different than clubs, like Le Bataclan, which had “black night”, I could not help but think back to that interpretation. Many of them were black, whereas others looked as if they were of Maghreb-descent but I was not exactly sure. La Place Centre du Hip-Hop allowed hip-hop dancers of African origins to dance in the hallways knowing that they would likely not be able to afford classes inside. These young students of hip-hop needed an outlet and although La Place Centre du Hip-Hop provided them this space, they still remained cemented to the exterior. At the same time, the use of space here is multi-faceted. I, again, was reminded of tagging. Tagging prompted a shift in the Parisian public’s outlook on hip-hop. It was also the sight of taking up space that did not necessarily belong to you. looked as if they were of Maghreb-descent but I was not exactly sure. La Place Centre du Hip-Hop allowed hip-hop dancers of African origins to dance in the hallways knowing that they would likely not be able to afford classes inside. These young students of hip-hop needed an outlet and although La Place Centre du Hip-Hop provided them this space, they still remained cemented to the exterior. At the same time, the use of space here is multi-faceted. I, again, was reminded of tagging. Tagging prompted a shift in the Parisian public’s outlook on hip-hop. It was also the sight of taking up space that did not necessarily belong to you.

Figure 18: La Centre du Hip-Hop. January 2017. Video.

It was informal, random, and loud, similarly to these kids in the hallways of La Place Centre du Hip-Hop. Although it was the system allowing them to occupy this space, they still took up space that did not conventionally belong to them. They were the intermediaries between dancers who could afford the classes and those who could did not feel comfortable entering the space. They were the entertainment outside of the coffee shop and outside of the media library. They took up space, laughed, and shared with each other. Although not as rebellious as graffiti art, there was still an element of rebellion as these young dancers mainly of African origins, claimed a space that aimed to commercialize or to museumize hip-hop culture. I stood there for hours, watching and engaging with the dancers because I was absolutely fascinated by this hallway. Throughout my time in Paris, I would often come back to this one hallway. shop and outside of the media library. They took up space, laughed, and shared with each other. Although not as rebellious as graffiti art, there was still an element of rebellion as these young dancers mainly of African origins, claimed a space that aimed to commercialize or to museumize hip-hop culture. I stood there for hours, watching and engaging with the dancers because I was absolutely fascinated by this hallway. Throughout my time in Paris, I would often come back to this one hallway.

Journey/Location

After hearing that Nelson Éwadne, one of the best current poppers in the French hip-hop scene, was leading a dance workshop while I was in Paris, I was adamant about going, regardless of where it was located. Nelson was leading a workshop at Espace Sportif Le Verseau in Saint-Maurice, which is a southeastern banlieue of Paris, France. The first thing I noticed was the distance of this location from central Paris. There is no metro station, RER, or rail metro that can get to St. Maurice. Instead, it requires you to take the metro line and then walk 20 minutes to reach this commune. What does it mean to have to walk 20 minutes everyday to get access to the metro station? It means a strained connection to the city marked by inaccessibility and a daily reminder that your neighborhood does not deserve to be readily connected to the city. By cutting people off from readily accessible transportation, you not only cut them off from the city, you cut them off from jobs as well. The struggle of “chomage” or “unemployment” is stark within the banlieues and accessibility is a significant root cause of this. This workshop in St. Maurice was incredibly difficult to not only find but reach.

Figure 19: Belleville. October 2011.108

In contrast, my first dance battle was in the gentrified, trendy heart of Paris at La Bellevilloise. Belleville is a multi-ethnic neighborhood. Given how diverse the community was, I was excited to go to a dance battle here. The first thing I noticed was the whiteness of my walk from the train station, Belleville, to La Bellevilloise. I remember taking a train to Parc des Buttes Chaumont the year before, which is also in Belleville and passing Moroccan pastry shops. This was dramatically different; the streets of my walk from the Belleville train station to La Bellevilloise were lined with French cafés and butchers. Belleveille is known for being the hub of Parisian “multi-culturality” given that it has a predominate North African and Sub-Saharan African population, as well as being Paris’s second Chinatown. The small community of Belleville has rapidly been changing and

108 “Would we find the next Van Gogh in Paris’s Belleville? 10 October 2011. Web. http://www.parisprovencevangogh.com/paris/would-we-find-the-next-van-gogh-in-parissbelleville

becoming more gentrified. I spoke to a white French model one night who told me she loved living in Belleville. That was when I realized that the communities that once lived there were quickly being pushed closer to the periphery. Overall, it was easy to get to La Bellevilloise. I noticeably had no problem at night walking back home and taking a stroll through Belleville to catch the train. loved living in Belleville. That was when I realized that the communities that once lived there were quickly being pushed closer to the periphery. Overall, it was easy to get to La Bellevilloise. I noticeably had no problem at night walking back home and taking a stroll through Belleville to catch the train.

Journeying to my second dance battle was a different story all together; it was extremely hard to get to. It was Foxsy, Nelson’s manager who I met at the workshop, who told me about this dance battle. I was disinterested in the event at first because of its location. Although it said Neuilly-Plaisance, I thought of Neuilly, which is the most posh suburb of Paris. Unlike St. Denis and the banlieues, Neuilly is outside of Paris but also houses the richest Parisians. It is also the place where former president Nicholas Sarkozy grew up. After my interview with Loick, I realized that Neuilly-Plaisance was very different from Neuilly. Neuilly-Plaisance is a commune within the department of Seine- Saint-Denis, which is the banlieue where Sûpreme NTM got its start. In order to get to the battle, I had to take the metro, then the RER-A and then take a bus. After waiting more than twenty-five minutes for the bus in the freezing cold, I hopped in an Uber that took me to the location. This journey felt more real to me as it was a physical reminder of the journey those in the banlieues have to go through everyday to get to Paris. At both dance battles, my journey there was greeted with hoards of people dancing in small circles.

Dress

When one thinks of hip-hop dance dress, one thinks of baggy pants, Adidas tracksuits, hoodies, and ‘80s jackets. I saw this at La Place Centre du Hip-Hop and the dance battles but I did not see this at the dance workshop, which was in Espace Sportif Le Verseau in St. Maurice. At La Place Centre du Hip-Hop, the dancer’s clothes were notably more “hip-hop” than that of those at the dance workshop. People wore drop-crotch pants with loose baggy shirts and sneakers. Others wore loose hoodies with a tracksuit jacket on top. At the workshop, people wore whatever made them feel comfortable. Some wore tight jeans whereas others wore leggings. In my eyes, this made them less legitimate.

For those at the workshop, their relationship with hip-hop was attending a dance workshop on “popping” as opposed to the relationship with hip-hop of those at La Place Centre du Hip-Hop, which was not only dance moves but also culture. It was clear that for them, hip-hop was not only a set of moves but a way of life. The dance competitions were very much in line with what I saw at La Place Centre du Hip-Hop. I fully went incognito by sporting what I thought symbolized hip-hop: drop-crotch pants, a loose short, a hoodie, and a snapback. Supposedly it worked because wherever I was, no one outwardly saw me as an outsider.

Figure 20: Nelson Showing Dance Moves to the Other Dancers. Espace Sportif. Jan. 2017. Video.

Audience

As I journeyed throughout these dance spaces, I often recognized the similarities within dress amongst the people. I also recognized a symbiotic relationship between dancers and the audience. Many of those who attended Nelson’s workshop at Espace Sportif Le Verseau were clearly not trained in popping. There were exactly 12 people in the room. Given how big of a name he was, I was expecting a larger crowd. The crowd was quite diverse with age ranges from around 35 years old to a 12 year old. At first, I could not tell who was here with Nelson and who was here to learn from him as if those two were intrinsically separated. The lines between teacher and students were blurred. This was also because Nelson interacted with each dancer as if he already knew them. As a simple beat played in the background, each dancer came into the middle to show off their skills. It was clear that people were at different skill levels in locking but each person was encouraged throughout. Nelson was engaged with each dancer and would often yell, “more” in French. Although the workshop had a small amount of attendees, it was clear that the workshop was there to be an outlet of expression for those within the neighborhood regardless of their race, age, or gender. At the dance battles, there was also this mélange of roles and informality that I also saw at the Nelson Éwande workshop. There was little formality and blending of audience/competitor at the dance battles. This was a clear tribute to the origins of hip- hop. At the beginning, there was the DJ, then there was a crowd of people who could each go in the middle and show off their moves. There was no order at first and no distinction between audience and competitor. The dance battle at La Bellevilloise started out as two circles of people with a hole in the middle. As the DJ played a beat, incorporating scratching and sampling to it as well, individuals jumped into the center to breakdance. Given that this was a breakdancing dance battle, one would assume that most people there had an affinity towards breakdancing. These mini dance battles before the competitions showcased their affinity for this type of dance. It was as if we were in the Bronx, NYC in the mid-1970s at one of DJ Kool Herc’s block parties. It also felt as if we were in one of the banlieues that Dee Nasty was throwing a block party in during the 1980s. This connection to the roots of battling did not go away when the dance battles began to grow in scale and when money started to be thrown down. incorporating scratching and sampling to it as well, individuals jumped into the center to breakdance. Given that this was a breakdancing dance battle, one would assume that most people there had an affinity towards breakdancing. These mini dance battles before the competitions showcased their affinity for this type of dance. It was as if we were in the Bronx, NYC in the mid-1970s at one of DJ Kool Herc’s block parties. It also felt as if we were in one of the banlieues that Dee Nasty was throwing a block party in during the 1980s. This connection to the roots of battling did not go away when the dance battles began to grow in scale and when money started to be thrown down.

One could argue that these large-scale dance battles in France began with Juste Debout (Just Standing) in 2001. Juste Debout is internationally known for being the biggest street dance competition in the world, bringing talent from countries across the world. Dancers compete in street dance styles within these four main categories: hip-hop, new style, house, locking and popping. The event was created by hip-hop French dancer Bruce Ykani and is held each year in the Bercy stadium in Paris.109 Since the creation of Juste Debout, dance battle competitions stepped beyond b-boys. Now, they expanded the categories. My first dance battle was a break-dancing one but my second dance battle included these new categories.

109 “Bruce Ykanji..What I am”. Street Dance Magazine. 21 Feb. 2012. Web.

Figure 20: Seine-Saint-Denis Second Dance Battle Audience. Jan. 2017.

The second dance battle in Seine Saint-Denis was on a much larger scale than the one at La Bellevilloise. The crowd was much larger and had many more French of African-descent. Although this event was much larger and had 400 euros at stake for the winner, the same informalities at La Bellevilloise occurred here as well. The battle also started around three-four hours late. Before the battles started, the competitors, the audiences, and the judges all took to the dance floor. Again, the lines between competitor and non-competitor were blurred. This also gives us room to believe that those in the audience were also in the dance world to some extent. This is because many of the members of the audience were members of the competitors’ crew.

The concept of the crew has always existed in hip-hop dance. Afrika Bambataa created the Zulu Nation to bring gang members into the dance world. With this, gangsters could unleash their hate/their quarrels through dance and rap as opposed to through violence. The battle atmosphere of hip-hop has always existed and plays out now at this dance battle when each competitor’s crew goes behind them to act as his/her support system. They did not care whose views they were blocking. Instead, they cared about cheering for their team member, giving them sound advice, and yelling at the competitor. This sense of camaraderie was the basis of the genesis of hip-hop and still plays a role in it today. -hop and still plays a role in it today.

Dancers interacted with their competitors but also interacted with both the judges and the audience by reaching out or looking at them. This showed how the dancers were not simply there to show moves but at the core, they were there to entertain. At certain points, members of the audience jumped and hollered when a dancer performed a move. At one point, a break-dancer almost started a fight with his competitor but was split up by a small group of audience members. The fight that almost happened attests to the competitive and masculine-dominated nature of dance battles. The domination of men in the spaces that I entered was notable. At both of the battles I attended, there was not a single woman who competed in 1v1 dance battles. The one time I saw a woman compete at the battle in Neuilly-Plaisance was in a choreographic piece. At my first b-boy battle at La Bellevilloise, one woman entered the dance circle in between battles only to be booed. There were a lot of women at the dance battles who acted as audience members but astonishingly rarely participated.

Although there are women who are in the hip-hop scene and who do battle, the lack of women competing attests to the origins of hip-hop. In the beginning, hip-hop battling was meant as a way for people to channel their anger and violence into dance. This has persisted through time as dance has continued to be a source of release, mainly for men. In order to avoid gang violence, people watched men let out their frustrations through dance battles. The role of the audience has always played a significant role. Traditionally, the audience members constantly engage with the dancers as they praise, scream, and sometimes, physically interact with the dancers. The lines between spectator and performer are blurred with the audience who are meant to be “spectators” sometimes become the performer themselves. and performer are blurred with the audience who are meant to be “spectators” sometimes become the performer themselves.

After the first round was completed at my second dance battle at Neuilly- Plaisance, the crowd disseminated and took over the dance floor again. Then, the final rounds began where each dancer had their last chance to prove themselves. I noticed high tensions and I could not tell if it was due to the money at stake or due to the fact that it had already been a long day requiring an incredible amount of endurance from the dancers. The crowd grew rowdier through the finals and at that moment, one could see how this space was for people to get excited and to share their talents with others who had a genuine appreciation for the hip hop dance art form.

Conclusion

The reclamation of space, freedom, and joy in the French hip-hop culture attests to the roots of hip-hop. Mark Lewis Taylor in Bringing Noise describes music as an experience that is “temporal and spatial, physical and cultural”.110 I argue that Mark Lewis Taylor’s description of music can be applied to hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon. Hip-hop is temporal. We see similarities between how hip-hop emerged in both New York City and how it exists in Paris today. Hip-hop is also spatial. Although a global phenomenon, hip- hop has managed to take up spaces in which it was not meant to belong to. This is because hip-hop culture has found the marginalized and the often silenced and have given them that voice through dance, music, and graffiti. In the case of France, it is for 110 Simon Reynolds. Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip-Hop. Soft Skull Press:

England, 111. geographical reasons that those who are not traditionally marginalized (white people) have taken up this feeling of a shared plight because of their location. not traditionally marginalized (white people) have taken up this feeling of a shared plight because of their location.

Finally, hip-hop is defined by its ability to morph into a cultural phenomenon. Not only is hip-hop an art form defined by its music, it is also defined by a culture that surrounds it. This manifests itself in dance, graffiti and dress. By creating that bridge from the banlieue identity to the history of hip-hop, we can now dive into the real crux of the problem. Although whiteness exists in rap in France and has laid claim to it, one cannot overlook the importance of rap music to people of color. In the case of France, I argue that whiteness has a space in hip-hop but those of African-descent have a unique embrace of rap. This is due to the ramifications of colonialism in their lives, which should not be overlooked. The reality is that for many Black and Brown people living in France, their French identity was not given to them by birth nor by their citizenship. Although many Brown and Black people are born in France, they were never truly seen as French by the state. This leaves Black and Brown people struggling to create a space for themselves in a world that questions their existence. In the next chapter, I argue that the banlieue identity unites those within those spaces but the struggle of cultural identity in France make it extremely important that Black and Arab youth a voice through hip-hop.

Chapter 3: Rewinding the Clock Rewinding the Clock

In the middle of the film La Haine, protagonists Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd are waiting outside of a fancy apartment building in Paris. Saïd had to pick up money from Asterix, a white coked-out man, who had taken over a posh Parisian apartment. The problem is that no one knows Asterix’s government name so they proceed to click on random buttons to get in the apartment building. When Saïd rings, he is scoffed at by every person who answers the intercom. Saïd shoves Vinz in front of the intercom camera in hopes that a white man, Vinz, has a better chance of being taken seriously than the black and Arab guys. Although Vinz is “one of the boys”, this scene is a reminder to all of them that they are different because of their race. La Haine, protagonists Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd are waiting outside of a fancy apartment building in Paris. Saïd had to pick up money from Asterix, a white coked-out man, who had taken over a posh Parisian apartment. The problem is that no one knows Asterix’s government name so they proceed to click on random buttons to get in the apartment building. When Saïd rings, he is scoffed at by every person who answers the intercom. Saïd shoves Vinz in front of the intercom camera in hopes that a white man, Vinz, has a better chance of being taken seriously than the black and Arab guys. Although Vinz is “one of the boys”, this scene is a reminder to all of them that they are different because of their race.

We have analyzed in great detail in both chapters 1 and 2 that the “banlieue” identity has allowed for some white people in France to be a part of a shared socioeconomic plight. This has then given them a free pass to enter the French hip-hop world without having to prove why they deserve to be there. Although a space has been carved out for white people in the French rap game, the rest of that space is occupied by the marginalized, which are the Arab and African communities. I argue that this marginalization is a result of the French racist agenda of colonialism and that rap is a way for the ethnically marginalized in French society to be heard and to claim their identity. Although the French rarely talk about colonialism, it is this history that continues to shape the way the French deal with very large community of those of African-descent. In order to explain how colonialism has imprinted itself onto French politics, I will briefly speak of the French colonial empire in Africa.

The Scramble for Africa

The Scramble for Africa in 1884-85 during the Berlin Conference allowed the great powers to create new colonial boundaries of Africa.111 In 1881, France established a protectorate in Tunisia112 and then established French control in Madagascar, turning it into one of their colonies in 1897.113 Even though France had a slave trading post on the island of Gorée dating back to 1677114 , it was not until 1889 that France and Britain made up colonial boundaries for the Senegambia region.115 Soon after, in 1893, France claimed Ivory Coast as a colony of theirs.116 Entering into the 20th century, France consolidated three French colonies into what then became French Equatorial Africa in 1910.117 Morocco then joined the ranks of French protectorates after the Treaty of Fès in 1912 where France agreed to rule the south of Morocco and Spain the north of Morocco.118

The Year of Africa happened in 1960 when seventeen African nations declared their independence. A culmination of continuing pressure from colonial subjects after certain promises were made during World War II coupled with growing demands for independence led to the collapse of the French colonial empire. Algeria and Morocco set

111“The Scramble for Africa”. St. John’s College: University of Cambridge. Web. https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/library_exhibitions/schoolresources/exploration/scramble_f or_africa/. 112 Robert Aldrich. Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. Print. 30. 113 Ibid, 83. 114 Phillip Briggs and Martin Harvey. Africa: Continent of Contrasts. (Struik Publishers: South Africa, 2007). Print. 108. 115 Ibid, 37. 116 Ibid, 42. 117 Ibid, 50. 118 Ibid, 35.

up this movement towards independence. With mounting conflict in Algeria where hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people died and in 1955, an armed uprising bringing the Moroccan French protectorate to a halt-the end of the empire was near. In 1958, France entered a new Republic and with that, created a new constitution. hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people died and in 1955, an armed uprising bringing the Moroccan French protectorate to a halt-the end of the empire was near. In 1958, France entered a new Republic and with that, created a new constitution.

In this new constitution, then president Charles De Gaulle created La Communauté (The Community) in which the French empire became a federation. With this new rule, former French colonies would still receive the support of France if they chose to stay in the federation. Guinea was the only country to opt-out, which led to them being completely cut off from France. In 1959, de Gaulle told members of the “community,” they could choose independence and had no idea so many would drop out of this “community”.119 In 1960, many African nations achieved independence from France. French Cameroon, French Sudan (now known as Mali), Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Central African Republic, Senegal, Mauritania, and French Togo all chose independence.120 Algeria, not a part of the discussion, eventually achieved independence in 1962 after a long and brutal guerilla war.

Seventy-seven years ago, many African nations achieved independence from France, which means that the historical memory of colonialism has not only been etched into the 20th century history of these societies but into their daily lives as they remember what it was like either living under colonial rule or hearing stories from one’s parents or grandparents. The French civilizing approach to colonialism allowed them to paint this picture of “community” that essentially sought to teach Africans the French way of living.

119 De Lusignan, French-Speaking Africa Since Independence. London: Pall Mall, 1969. Print. 28 120 Robert Aldrich, Greater France, 303.

The French left their own country to go to other countries to tell them that they should fully embrace French culture because the French understanding of the Republic and culture was the only right way. The relation of the colonized with the colonial powers did not cease with the end of colonialism. The French continued to be preoccupied with turning the uncivilized and “dirty” world French. fully embrace French culture because the French understanding of the Republic and culture was the only right way. The relation of the colonized with the colonial powers did not cease with the end of colonialism. The French continued to be preoccupied with turning the uncivilized and “dirty” world French.

France and Algeria’s Fight for its Identity

Algeria’s history with France is a notably brutal one. France invaded and seized Algiers in 1830.121 Instead of proclaiming Algeria a colony of the French Empire, it was instead annexed into France in 1834.122 This meant that Algeria was now France and Algerians no longer existed as their own people. An independence movement began the minute the French landed on Algerian land, led by Emir Abdelkader El Djezairi.123 It took France until 1847 to finally capture him.124

The liberation movement of Algerians would never cease, however, and eventually led to an extremely bloody period in the 1900s. The French method of ruling was to divide the people. Their purpose was to wash away their Algerian identity and make them as much a part of French identity as possible. The French upholding of the

121 “French Empire” History World. Web. http://www.historyworld.net/timesearch/default.asp?conid=2&bottomsort=21854729&directio n=NEXT&keywords=French%20empire&timelineid. 122 Andrew Hussey. “Algiers: a city where France is the promised land-and still the enemy”. The Guardian. 26 January 2013. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/27/algeriafrance- colonial-past-islam. 123 Deniz Renkveren. “How French Colonization shaped Algeria’s future”. Daily Sabah. 17 June 2016. Web. https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2016/06/18/how-french-colonizationshaped- algerias-future

124 Ibid.

Republic identity, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and Laïc, as explained in Chapter 1 exceeded the borders of the French hexagon and was transposed to Algeria. This manifested itself in turning the official language to French and forcing children to go to French schools. This is significant because the French also forced Algerian children to attend French rather than Muslim schools. They also sought to modernize or as the French would say “liberate” women, preventing them from wearing any garment that would show that they were Muslim women. In addition, the French brought the mainland to Algeria as well, establishing a hierarchy of power in Algeria and encouraging those on French territory to leave to start anew in French Algeria. These people would later be called ‘pied-noirs’, or ‘black boots’ in English. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and Laïc, as explained in Chapter 1 exceeded the borders of the French hexagon and was transposed to Algeria. This manifested itself in turning the official language to French and forcing children to go to French schools. This is significant because the French also forced Algerian children to attend French rather than Muslim schools. They also sought to modernize or as the French would say “liberate” women, preventing them from wearing any garment that would show that they were Muslim women. In addition, the French brought the mainland to Algeria as well, establishing a hierarchy of power in Algeria and encouraging those on French territory to leave to start anew in French Algeria. These people would later be called ‘pied-noirs’, or ‘black boots’ in English.

These ‘pied-noirs’ were given land that belonged to Algerians, forcing thousands of Algerians off of their land.125 The ‘pied-noirs’ soon became the ruling elite, which meant that Algerians were French subjects and lived in France but they were second-class citizens. Soon, the ‘pied-noirs’ developed their own identity that divorced them from mainland France but also kept them superior to native Algerians. Their claim to Algeria was through the murder and displacement of native Algerians from their own land. The tides began to turn in 1954 when the FLN (National Liberation Front) was established and launched the Algerian War of Independence. Algeria finally won its independence but this was after “estimates of hundreds of thousands to more than a million Algerian Muslims dying, with tens of thousands of French military and civilians perishing in the

125Andrew Hussey. “Algiers: a city where France is the promised land – and still the enemy”. Web. conflict.”126 After decades of the French trying to “cleanse” Algeria by claiming it as France, forcing it to embrace the laïc modern French way of living, playing a role in the death of possibly a million people, the relationship between Algeria and France today can only be seen as cold at best. More recently, France has begun to acknowledge the atrocities it committed during the Algerian War. For example, “after 37 years of denial, in 1998 the French government acknowledged 40 deaths, although there are estimates of 100 to 300 victims died on the Saint-Michel Bridge in Paris”.127 On this bridge in 1961, pro-FLN Algerians marched and were met with a Parisian police force that massacred large numbers of Algerians. The police officers then threw their bodies into the Seine river. A police force, which was meant to quell demonstration, turned into a death squad. It took France 37 years to admit that this atrocity occurred within their own borders, which goes to show how recently France has attempted to wake up from its amnesia.

Today, the National Front, a right-wing populist and nationalist political party, is dominating the waves spewing Islamophobic and Xenophobic rhetoric. They have been growing in power since the organization’s foundation in 1972 with Marine Le Pen, its former president,128 a final candidate for the 2017 French presidency. The party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, served in Algeria. Not only that, one of the bases of his party was to critique Charles de Gaulle for granting Algeria independence. Many French far

126 Eliza Berman. “The History of French-Muslim Violence Began in the Streets of Algeria”. Time. 13 January 2015. Web. http://time.com/3664161/france-algeria-muslim-violence/. 127 Ted Swedenburg. "Islamic Hip-Hop versus Islamophobia" in Mitchell, Tony. (Ed) Global Noise. 2002. 77. 128 In an effort to widen her audience, Marine Le Pen temporarily left the national Front party.

Shehab Khan. “Marine Le Pen temporarily steps down as Front National leader to concentrate on presidential bid.” Independent. 24 April 2017. Web.

right conservatists within Jean-Marie Le Pen’s party painted De Gaulle as a traitor. -Marie Le Pen’s party painted De Gaulle as a traitor. 129130 It is important to note that one of the main French political parties of today comprises those who were actively against the Algerian fight for independence and saw the end of French Algeria as an act of treason. This goes to show that although the French government may seek to ameliorate the relationship between Algerians and France, the existence of a party, such as the National Front, actively dismantles any progress that is made. To this day, Algerians in France often live on the peripheries of society and constantly deal with harassment for presenting themselves as Algerians or Muslims as opposed to French, which assumes an alleged opposition between these identities.

Médine Zaouiché, a politically conscious French-Algerian rapper, who is also Muslim and raps about laïcité, brings the historical importance of French-Algerian relations into his music. Médine Zaouiche grew up in the Quartier Mont-Gaillard, a government housing project within a “sensitive urban zone” of Le Havre, which is in the Normandy region of northwestern France.131 His parents are Kabyle people, which is a Berber ethnic group from the north of Algeria.132 To explore this I will look at Médine’s song Don’t Laïk, which is a play on Chief Keef’s 2012 I Don’t’ Like. To begin, I will analyze his words and then the imagery within this music video.

129 Edward G. DeClair, Politics on the Fringe: The People, Policies, and Organization of the French National Front. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. Print. 22. 130 Ibid, 23. 131 Solène Betrand. “Le rappeur du Havre, Médine, mal-aimé des medias français, se confie au New York Times”. 76 Actu Normandie. 27 Jan. 2016. Web. http://www.normandie-actu.fr/lerappeur- du-havre-medine-mal-aime-des-medias-francais-se-confie-au-new-york-times_178061/. 132Kabyle People. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabyle_people.

Don’t Laïk k

Médine within his first verse criticizes the double-standards of the concept of laïcité and its actual application. He says, “On parlera laïcité entre l’Aïd et la Saint-Matthieu.”133 This phrase questions the validity of this strictly secular state of France if religious holidays continue to be recognized. He then suggests that although laïcité does not truly exist, people mask their commitment to laïcité with Islamaphobia. “Je porte la barbe, j’suis de mauvais poil134” “I have a beard, I have bad hair”. In reality, Médine is speaking to the fact that his beard, which is religious in nature, makes people uncomfortable for it associates him to Jihadists in the minds of the French.

He then exposes this fear of “Islam” in France in response to a statement made by the former leader of the far-right party the National Front, Marine le Pen. He says, “Cherche pas de viande Halal dans tes lasagnes c’est que du cheval”135 “Don’t search for Halal meat in your lasagna, it’s from a horse”. Here, he throws a jab at Marine le Pen who asserted that all French meat that wasn’t pork was Halal without the discretion of the consumers.136 Although this turned out to be blatantly false, Médine points out that she should be more worried about eating horse meat, which was actually happening at the same time. Her paranoia around the idea that her food might be Halal and everyone else’s food as well attests to this fear/paranoia of the French being consumed by the

133 Médine. Don’t Laïk lyrics. Genius. Web. https://genius.com/Medine-dont-laik-lyrics. “We speak of laïcité while there is Eid and a holiday for St. Mathew”. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136Caroline Politi. “Marine Le Pen a-t-elle raison sur le halal?” L’Express. 20 January 2012. Web. http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/marine-le-pen-a-t-elle-raison-sur-lehalal_ 1084490.html. threat of the imposition of Islam from jihadism to meat consumption. onsumption.

In the chorus, he says, “Te barbe, rebeu, dans ce pays c’est Don’t Laïk / Ton voile, ma soeur, dans ce pays c’est Don’t Laïk/Ta foi, nigga, dans ce pays c’est Don’t Laïk. “137 In this short chorus, he speaks of a Beur138 of Arab descent who has a beard representative of his faith, a woman who has a veil representative of her faith, and a Black person who believes in Islamic faith, who are all considered not laïc aka not French. The use of Blackness here is quite interesting as a man of Algerian descent uses the word “nigga” to reach out to his Black brothers. We see this alliance and distinction later within the music video when there are two Black men selling Negritude books.139

This becomes an important theme throughout the music video, as he seems to conflate notions of Islamophobia with racism, which has now been called “laïcisme”, a pejorative word for using laïcité to justify acts against religion. In Dont’ Laïk, Médine unites the plight of both Arab and Black people living in France to the downfalls of laïcité. By having the Negritude books after he talks about the hypocrisy of laïcité demonstrates that those are both forms of racism as it targets Black and Arab people are targeted.

Figure 21: Don’t Laïk by Médine

137 Your beard, Beur, in this country, It’s Not Laïc/ Your Veil sister, in this country, it’s Not Laïc/ Your faith nigga, in this country, It’s Not Laïc” 138 Beur is someone of Maghrebi (a North-African Arab) descent. 139 Négritude movement will be spoken about in depth later on in this chapter.

We also see them tossing bananas onto a cart of rotten and ripe bananas. The usage of the bananas might be in reference to Black national soccer players from a variety of different countries getting bananas thrown at them during away games and having racist slurs yelled at them to distract them from the game. This has become commonplace at away matches from Spain to Russia. anas onto a cart of rotten and ripe bananas. The usage of the bananas might be in reference to Black national soccer players from a variety of different countries getting bananas thrown at them during away games and having racist slurs yelled at them to distract them from the game. This has become commonplace at away matches from Spain to Russia.140 Although this song focuses on religion in France, the evocation of blackness within the video connects racism and the struggles of being Black to the system that supports laïcisme.

Figure 22: Don’t Laïk by Médine

Throughout the video, we see a woman cutting a cake with the words Halal and the Arabic characters for Halal141 spelled out. The cake is then revealed to have layers with the colors of the French republic-red, blue, and white, which suggest that the word Halal and the French republic can co-exist.

We also see two Arab women wearing light pink and crème hijabs drawing henna onto each other, which then cuts to a bust of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic.142 Having those cuts come right after each other may be there to juxtapose the

140 Alan Pyke. “Fan Yells Monkey Noises at Black Soccer Player, But Only the Player Gets Kicked Out.” Think Progress. 18 July 2015. Web. https://thinkprogress.org/fan-yells-monkeynoises- at-black-soccer-player-but-only-the-player-gets-kicked-out-64fcd35957a.

141 Halal is meat that is in accordance with Islamic Shari’ah by being slaughtered in a ritual way. 142 Similarly to NYC’s Lady of Liberty. two images but it may also serve to show the smooth transition between the two. In one instance, Médine could be demonstrating that Arab women in hijabs being content with practicing their cultural practices will always be cut off by the French republic, forcing the French way of living to supersede their cultural practices. On the other hand, having those cuts come right after each other could show that both of these images symbolize France and can exist right after each other without becoming conflictual. With both interpretations of this moment in Don’t Laïk, Médine is showing that, as it stands, these two images side-by-side does seem at odds with what laïcité has morphed into but it does not have to be that way. instance, Médine could be demonstrating that Arab women in hijabs being content with practicing their cultural practices will always be cut off by the French republic, forcing the French way of living to supersede their cultural practices. On the other hand, having those cuts come right after each other could show that both of these images symbolize France and can exist right after each other without becoming conflictual. With both interpretations of this moment in Don’t Laïk, Médine is showing that, as it stands, these two images side-by-side does seem at odds with what laïcité has morphed into but it does not have to be that way.

Figure 23: Don’t Laïk by Médine. Time: 1:05. Video.

We do see an outright critique of the irony of laïcité when we see the back of a woman. We are meant to assume that we are seeing a Muslim woman but then it reveals that the woman is a Christian Nun. This calls into question the double standard of the burqa ban in France where women are not allowed to wear the burqa or risk being fined. This rule does not apply to Nuns, although their attire is virtually the same. Therefore, the reason for the burqa ban has to go beyond simple religion. Close to the end of the song, Médine says, “À la journée de la femme, j’porte un Burquini.”143 “On Women’s Day, I will wear a Burkini” Although the Burkini144 is banned,145 Médine is claiming here that he would wear it in support of veiled women so as to show their independence and power in their body and how they present it to the world.

Throughout this song, we see the conflation of laïcisme and racism. Médine in this piece asserts that he can be a devout Muslim and live in France but his religion will be a threat to France as long as the French refuse to admit their double-standards in reacting to Islam as opposed to other major religions. This double standard dates back to France’s invasion of Algeria where they set out to not only change the religion of thousands of people but destroyed them if they did not submit to the French way of life. It also dates back to the period of French colonialism where people of color were seen as savages and therefore needed to be cleansed. The desire of the French government to “wash off” the savage continues to be seen in France today as they legally force people to assimilate to French secular culture. This fight for identity that Algerians embarked on has not ended and has been translated into music through artists, such as Médine.

Scream in Praise of Africa

This desire to modernize the religion of native Africans in an effort to civilize them the

143 Médine. Don’t Laïk. Genius. 144A Burkini is a type of swimsuit, which covers the whole body except the face. This allows women to cover their body while at the beach. The burkini has been associated with Islamic dress. 145 Ben Quinn. “French police make woman remove clothing on Nice beach following burkini ban”. The Guardian. 23 August 2016. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/french-police-make-woman-removeburkini- on-nice-beach. “French way” also occurred in Senegal. The fact that the French rapper MHD’s parents grew up in Senegal and Guinea plays a dominant role in his music. In 2016, French rapper MHD released his first album MHD. Before the release of this album, his AfroTrap Youtube videos had already gone viral. One of his videos, “Champions League” has more than 74 million views. grew up in Senegal and Guinea plays a dominant role in his music. In 2016, French rapper MHD released his first album MHD. Before the release of this album, his AfroTrap Youtube videos had already gone viral. One of his videos, “Champions League” has more than 74 million views.146 Although released just two months ago, MHD’s “AFRO TRAP Part.7 (La Puissance)” (AFRO TRAP Part. 7 (The Power)) has more than 64 million views on Youtube.147 He became an overnight sensation in large part due to his infusion of Afrobeats with Atlanta trap beats, which he calls “AfroTrap.” His music often consists of “coupé-décalé” beats, in his terms.148 Although coupé-décalé is quite popular in the Ivory Coast, the music trend was actually created by two Ivorian DJs at a Parisian nightclub called the Atlantis.149 The style is highly percussive incorporating world music with synthesizers and maintaining a consistent repeating beat.150 The coupédécalé beats are clear as MHD constantly infuses traditional West African beats and instruments in his music. Although he was born in France, his music reminds people of his ethnic origins as he celebrates his West African background. This is of utmost importance given that the French colonized both of his countries of origin: Senegal and Guinea. 146 MHD. “AFRO TRAP Part.3 (Champions League)”. Youtube. Nov. 4, 2015. Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi1D0MKWHU0. 147 MHD. “La Puissance”. Youtube. Dec. 23 2016. Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWHR0fS9jvQ

148 Zach Goldbaum. “MHD, Afro-trap and the 19th”. Vice. Web. https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/MhD-afro-trap-and-the19th/ 58867c75054e512b5582c84e. 149John McDonnell. “Scene and heard: Coupé-Décalé”. The Guardian. 18 November 2008. Web. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2008/nov/18/scene-and-heard-coupe-decale. 150 “Coupé-décalé aladji”. Youtube. 27 October 2006. Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uchk1kXZBXU.

The colonial conquest of West Africa was quite reminiscent of the French conquest of Algeria in terms of imposing a French way of life on non-French people. A literary movement in response to this diminution of African Muslim traditions emerged in the 1930s. Pioneered by African intellectuals, the movement titled Négritude, sought to reject French colonialism and push for a united black African identity. Two of the pioneers of the movements were Martiniquan poet Aimé Cesaire and Senegalese poet Leopold Senghor. Both meeting for the first time in Paris, they started a literary magazine entitled L’Étudiant Noir, where they sought to reject the validity of their need to assimilate into French culture and instead reclaimed the word “nègre”.

This reclamation and shouting of pride in one’s heritage is clear in Leopold Senghor’s “I Will Pronounce Your Name.”151 The poem opens up with, “I will pronounce your name, Naett, I will declaim you, Naett”152. Here, not only is he putting in the effort to say Naett’s name correctly, he is declaiming it as if he is delivering her name to the world with passion and fervor. In this poem, Senghor professes his love for a young African named Naett. This love is alluded to constantly as he demonstrates his love for Naett through things he loves about Africa. By declaiming her name, Senghor rejects the French way of living, which is to blend in. Instead, he embraces this difference and screams it out as a form of rebellion, pride, and admiration with his black African heritage.

He then goes on to say, “Naett, your name is the sugared clarity of blooming

151 Translated. Zaynab Quadri. “I Will Pronounce your name by Sedar Leopold Senghor”. Pulse.ng. 06 January 2015. Web. http://pulse.ng/books/poem-i-will-pronounce-your-name-by-sedar-leopold-senghorid3821090. html. 152Ibid.

coffee trees/And it resembles the savannah, that blossoms forth under the masculine ardour of the midday sun”ardour of the midday sun”153. Using symbols of Africa, such as the savannah and coffee trees, which is a major export from Africa, he praises the beauty of his land. By using words such as “blossom” and “sugared”, the reader visualizes a sweetness and evolution of Africa. Close to the end of his poem Senghor says, “I am your hero, and now I have become your sorcerer in order to pronounce your name.” By co-creating the Négritude movement, Senghor became a pioneer and guarder of black culture. His understanding of colonialism was that it was at odds with culture and its existence threatened the united culture of Blackness. By subjugating Black people to a false reality that forces them to believe in French whiteness as the proper way of life, Senghor feared that his culture and Blackness was under threat. It was through his poems, such as this one, that he sought to proclaim his African blackness with the same fervor to which he declaimed Naett’s name.

Although Senegal became independent from colonial rule in 1960, this need to reclaim one’s Africanness still persists. The vast migration to France for work transported the colonies to within the mainland of France, leaving France to continue their colonial mission within their borders long after colonialism ended. The work of MHD showcases how there is a continued need to reclaim one’s heritage and to not feel forced to assimilate into a supposed “French” identity.

The Rise of Afro-Trap

MHD, from the 19th arrondisement within Paris, which is close to Belleville, sought to reshape the image the media was giving his neighborhood after the attacks at Charlie

153 Ibid.

Hebdo. The two assailants of the Charlie Hebdo attacks grew up in his neighborhood, which drew much negative attention from the media. He was determined to reconstruct how the public viewed the urban “troubled” youth of the cités. He did so by recording his own music videos and putting them on the Internet to then be seen by the masses. In an interview with Vice, MHD said that he was trying to give his neighborhood a different representation: “Quand personne me parle de tensions de la ville je ne sais quoi. On a toujours une mauvaise image. Quand nous avons trouver ces images, nous ne calculent pas.” which drew much negative attention from the media. He was determined to reconstruct how the public viewed the urban “troubled” youth of the cités. He did so by recording his own music videos and putting them on the Internet to then be seen by the masses. In an interview with Vice, MHD said that he was trying to give his neighborhood a different representation: “Quand personne me parle de tensions de la ville je ne sais quoi. On a toujours une mauvaise image. Quand nous avons trouver ces images, nous ne calculent pas.”154 According to MHD, the image being constructed in the media is fallacious and is meant to paint him and neighborhoods such as his as “radical” and “other.” This only strengthens the divide between this social banlieue identity and this often-conflicting French identity.

By developing the “AfroTrap” movement, MHD is able to help re-construct representations of his neighborhood and bring a positive approach to it. This allows him to humanize his people and his neighbors. To showcase this Afro-French joy within his work, I will be looking at A Kele Nta. The song celebrates the marriage of his best friend in a show of celebration of love, and most importantly, of pride in one’s culture. The title of the song means, “My Brother, Just Choose Her”, in Bambara, a tribe of Mandé people who primarily live in Mali but also in Guinea and Senegal.

154Zach Goldbaum. “MHD, Afro-trap and the 19th”. Vice. Web. “When someone speaks to me about tensions in my city, I don’t know what they’re talking about. There is always a bad image. When we see these images, we don’t pay attention.

Figure 24: A Kele Nta-MHD. Released in 2016. Youtube.

In A Kele Nta, his lyrics are simple and speak of his excitement that his friend is getting married. There is nothing deep about the song and it is for that exact reason I believe it captures the simplicity of life that we do not see with more political artists. The name of the song is a tribute to his Bambara background and the placement of the music video in Dakar, Senegal is a tribute to his Senegalese background. There is a simple percussive beat and one can also hear the sound of the kora, which is a string instrument that is a staple in West African music.

Figure 24: Car Rapide .

One also sees the bride get into a “car rapide”, which is a mode of transportation, quite specific to Senegal. These buses have been Dakar’s main form of urban transportation for the past 40 years.155 Although Senegalese natives have become used to these cars, “one tourist who recently visited Dakar said: ‘I was shocked how dangerous they were — the back doors swing open, there are men who hang off the back, often times casually hanging on almost in a cocky sort of way. I was shocked also how many people seem to be on the buses, crammed inside as well.”156 Spewing exhaust with young men who serve as ticket controllers hanging from the back of the car, foreigners are shocked by Dakar’s premiere source of urban transportation. Regardless of foreigner’s perceptions, the car rapide has become a staple in Senegalese culture. The fronts of the cars often say the words, “Alhamdoulillah” “All Praise Be to Allah”, “Touba”157, or other Sufi religious images/texts. Although the car rapide may be phased out in the near future, their cultural importance will always remain. Figure 24: A Kele Nta

One also sees the role of clothing in maintaining MHD’s culture. His clothes

155 Katie Pisa. “Senegal’s ‘car rapides’ to be phased out by 2018”. CNN Travel. 30 June 2016. Web. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/travel/car-rapides-senegal/. 156 Ibid. 157 Touba is a city in central Senegal and is the holy city of Mouridism, a Sufi order founded in 1883. Mouridism’s founder, Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbaké, is buried here.

within the video reflect his two worlds: West African and European. On the left, one sees him wearing traditional West African patterns whereas on the right, one sees him wearing more Europeanized clothes. This song is a tribute to black celebration, black love, and how important his West African culture is to him even though he was not born in Senegal nor in Guinea. By setting this video in West Africa, he is sharing his culture and his heritage with the over 50 million people who have watched this music video. him wearing traditional West African patterns whereas on the right, one sees him wearing more Europeanized clothes. This song is a tribute to black celebration, black love, and how important his West African culture is to him even though he was not born in Senegal nor in Guinea. By setting this video in West Africa, he is sharing his culture and his heritage with the over 50 million people who have watched this music video.

This acclamation of not only Black joy but pride in one’s Black African heritage reminds us that the work of Senghor has not ended. Hip-hop has become an avenue to turn the poetry of Senghor into a modern way of reaching the masses. During colonialism, the French tried to force Africans to forsake their culture in an effort to assimilate to the French way of living. Although colonialism has ended, this rejection of assimilation and embrace of African heritage is still felt throughout the generations. MHD was born in France but he wears Africa pridefully on his shoulder. By praising Africa similarly to how Senghor praised Africa in “I Will Pronounce Your Name”, MHD conjures up the sentiments of the Négritude movement in his song A Kele Nta. This conjuring of the proclamation of blackness through hip-hop in an age “post-colonial” attests to the importance of hip-hop as a medium for those living on the fringes of French society.

Conclusion

As long as they do not make too much noise, what better way to deal with the dirty world than to keep them outside? Throughout my thesis project, this has been a burning question for me as I sought to analyze the complexities of identity in the banlieues of

France as well as mediums that those within the banlieues used to make their voice heard. Tchumkam analyzes the embarrassment the French have towards their former colonies as well as towards those of the banlieues as it is a constant reminder of their colonial history. The best way to deal with this amnesia is to ignore these individuals through the use of space. “From the perspective of space, one is struck by the observation that spatial organization in France is conspicuous for its creation and maintenance of a margin, banlieues, a periphery that is truly found neither inside nor outside privileged space, neither within the public nor within the private; (the French banlieues represent a) “risk to “national” cohesion that is tending to weaken the Republic.” nce as well as mediums that those within the banlieues used to make their voice heard. Tchumkam analyzes the embarrassment the French have towards their former colonies as well as towards those of the banlieues as it is a constant reminder of their colonial history. The best way to deal with this amnesia is to ignore these individuals through the use of space. “From the perspective of space, one is struck by the observation that spatial organization in France is conspicuous for its creation and maintenance of a margin, banlieues, a periphery that is truly found neither inside nor outside privileged space, neither within the public nor within the private; (the French banlieues represent a) “risk to “national” cohesion that is tending to weaken the Republic.”158 The literal shove of France’s colonial history to the outskirts of the cities of France in order to be “forgotten”, to be marked as “other”, or to be completely misheard has been a way for France to create a “banlieue problem” and have no way of truly dealing with it. A major reason why France has not been able to deal with “the others” is because they fail to recognize the importance of race in this problem although it is the death of Black men that have been the source of rioting in France for the past decades.

Hip-hop is a phenomenon that allows people to break down what has been given to them and reconstruct it in a way that gives them a voice that they never had. Before understanding hip-hop’s globalization, we have to understand why it emerged in the first place. As I have shown in this thesis project, hip-hop was not meant to be an activity but a form of ‘survival’ by allowing people to break into spaces that did not belong to them through their bodies, their artwork, and their voices. Around the world, the black

158 Hervé Tchumkam. State Power, Stigmatization, and Youth Resistance Culture in the French Banlieues: Uncanny Citizenship. Lexington Books: Maryland, 2015. Print. 12. diaspora occupies a space in the Western world that continually needs to be deconstructed and reconstructed. As hip-hop has gone global moving from the streets of the South Bronx to the banlieues of Paris, what it means to live in a space where your life must be both deconstructed and reconstructed at the same time is not always limited to the Black diaspora. Due to urbanization and the existence of white people in the banlieues of France, traditionally non-marginalized people feel a part of a shared plight with their Black and Brown neighbors. With that said, the history of colonialism that I have talked about in great detail shows us that hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon and a way of survival still finds grounding in Black and Brown communities. deconstructed and reconstructed. As hip-hop has gone global moving from the streets of the South Bronx to the banlieues of Paris, what it means to live in a space where your life must be both deconstructed and reconstructed at the same time is not always limited to the Black diaspora. Due to urbanization and the existence of white people in the banlieues of France, traditionally non-marginalized people feel a part of a shared plight with their Black and Brown neighbors. With that said, the history of colonialism that I have talked about in great detail shows us that hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon and a way of survival still finds grounding in Black and Brown communities.

“La Communauté” that De Gaulle tried to convince his colonies existed did not exist then and certainly does not exist now. Hip-hop has been the way that Black and Brown people living on the ‘outside’ of French society because of their race, religion, and their home have found their voice. It is through hip-hop that MHD is able to proclaim his blackness to the French state and Médine is able to proclaim his steadfast commitment to his religious beliefs in the face of a government that seeks to denounce his loyalties to anything other than the white secular French identity. Through this thesis, I have found that hip-hop in France is both a reflection of both a spatial and racial plight. It is, however, the history of colonialism that keeps French hip-hop rooted to the purposes of its foundation, which was to allow Black and Brown people to continually re-build off of a shaky foundation that consistently and purposefully falls apart.