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Williams College Libraries Thesis Release Form All theses are available online to Williams users with a Williams log-in and password. Select one response for each question. Form to be completed jointly by student and faculty member. ACCESS TO YOUR THESIS Faculty claims co-authorship? )§__ No Yes When do you want your thesis made available to any user beyond Williams? 7ElNow _5 years _10years _After lifetime of author(s) OWNERSHIP/COPYRIGHT Theses that contain copyrighted material cannot be made available beyond Williams users. Does your thesis contain -copy_ljghted- - - ···--- materials-- without copyright clearance? [8No -Yes (Copyrighted sections of the thesis will not be made available online. You have the option to submit a second version of the thesis omitting copyrighted material. Contact College Archives for details, [email protected]) You.ow.n cnp.yLigh.Uo yo.ur__tb.esi_ s..JLv.ou choose to transfer co_p...Y!lght to Williams, the C�lege will make your thesis freely available online. When do you want to transfer copyright? [El Now _In 5 years _. In 10years _After lifetime of author(s) Please provide a brief (1-5 sentences) description of your thesis. 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. 1 of 2 Williams College libraries Thesis Release Form Changes to the thesis release form require a new form to be completed, signed and returned to Special Collections in Sawyer Library. Theses can be viewed in Special Collections; print copies of Division Ill and Psychology theses are available at Schow Science Library. Direct questions about this form to the College Archivist ([email protected]). � 'fr.r.'otvt• /J +='I'M ' Title of thesis: (j!.. - � {ttf� ft�tl '0� hp!Oiid �� Author( s): i OJ\OI. JYlor rJj;1 Signatures: � ____ Student (Print): __Maria a Nd ye_ Date: 5/8/2017 � ) Student (Signature): Faculty (Print):_ Signatures Redacted Faculty (Signature): Faculty (Print): ------------------ Date: _________ Faculty (Signature): ---------------- Date: _________ Faculty (Print): ----------------- Date: _________ Faculty (Signature): ---------------- Date: _________ Faculty (Print): ------------------ Date: ___ ______ Faculty (Signature): ---------------- Date: --------- 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.