Rap Gets Political Letters by K.A
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KAD-8 FRANCE Kay Dilday is an Institute Fellow studying relationships of the French and North African ICWA immigrants in France – and North Africa. Rap Gets Political LETTERS By K.A. Dilday DECEMBER 8, 2006 Since 1925 the Institute of Current PARIS–In 1984 a series called “Hip-Hop” began to air on TF1, the major non-state World Affairs (the Crane-Rogers funded general channel in France. Foundation) has provided long-term fellowships to enable outstanding The presenter, Sidney, was a DJ who had just returned from an exhilarat- young professionals to live outside ing few years exploring an alternative musical culture emerging in New York’s urban underground. He wanted to bring a taste of that vibrant subversive life- the United States and write about style—break dancing, graffiti, rap—to France. “Hip-Hop” easily found a spot on international areas and issues. An ex- mainstream television; for decades, the chattering classes in France had been fas- empt operating foundation endowed cinated by black American culture and were particularly satisfied by complaints by the late Charles R. Crane, the about American racism. But the show didn’t just titillate France’s middle class. Institute is also supported by contri- It found a hungry audience in immigrant youth and black youth from France’s butions from like-minded individuals Caribbean islands. Everyone over a certain age in the music industry remembers and foundations. that show because it changed their lives and it changed the business. “It was the first time kids in the cités had seen anyone who looked like them on television,” said Christophe “Tex” Lacroix, a businessman who started France’s first hip-hop magazine, Get Busy. TRUSTEES Bryn Barnard Rap grabbed hold of French youth in part because was accessible. Anyone Joseph Battat who can talk thinks they can rap, which is both true and not true. At its most ba- Carole Beaulieu sic definition, rap is simply someone talking over music. Thus every adolescent Mary Lynne Bird boy in the cités (housing complexes in France’s poor suburbs) could set his patter Steven Butler to radio and call himself a rapper. The first rap music videos were subtitled so Peter Geithner French people could understand the lyrics, which led to a moment of confusion Gary Hartshorn in the early ’80s when they couldn’t decide whether to rap in French or English, Pramila Jayapal since the lyrics weren’t as punchy when translated. But in the end the decision Cheng Li was fairly simple. They didn’t speak English. Dasa Obereigner David Z. Robinson The best rappers are also poets and sociologists, documenting a moment in Carol Rose time with the day’s pop culture references layered on top of social commentary, John Spencer mixed with boasts about all manner of prowess. But as with great singers, the Edmund Sutton rappers who become truly successful have a distinct voice. In 1987 a graffiti artist calling himself Joey Starr set his husky growl to music as part of the group NTM. HONORARY TRUSTEES David Elliot A French man of Antillan origin, Joey Starr was born Didier Morville in a rough David Hapgood Parisian suburb in 1967. Scarcely out of his teens and fresh out of the army, he wasn’t Pat M. Holt quite a criminal in 1987 nor was he quite homeless. He frequently found himself on Edwin S. Munger the wrong side of the law or sleeping in metro stations, since his father had kicked Richard H. Nolte him out of their home. Explosive, angry and with a name that was an abbreviation Albert Ravenholt for a vulgar insult, the group NTM became emblematic of French street culture. In Phillips Talbot the intervening 20 years, Joey Starr has been in and out of legal trouble, married one of France’s famous actresses and, in 2006, nearly 20 years since his group burst on the scene, he has successfully reinvented himself as a rapper cum political activ- ist. Given his dubious past—just this winter, he was in court for using a false iden- tity in 2005—it’s not clear whether his acceptance as a political leader derives from Institute of Current World Affairs his dedication to the cause, his fame or the lack of clear alternatives. When it comes The Crane-Rogers Foundation Four West Wheelock Street to black and brown political leaders, the field in France is remarkably clear. Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 U.S.A. The banelieus just outside of major cities are home to much of France’s black and brown population. Tex is a white Frenchman married to a woman of Congo- lese descent; he still lives in the neuf-cinq, where he grew up. That shorthand refers to the first two numbers of his geographi- cal department, nine-five. Tex’s department places him in the French social hierarchy. As in most parts of the world, geography has a direct correlation to social standing. Power and wealth is concentrated in central Paris. Most of the immediate suburbs are char- acterized by clusters of densely populated concrete towers and a heavy concentration of workers (ouvriers). In a country where it is illegal to gather statistics by race and eth- nicity, ouvriers is a shorthand demographers often use for poor dark people. Rap music is aimed at peripheral cul- ture, those who live on the outskirts of city life. Alain Touraine, a sociologist, has pro- posed that because class in France is affili- ated with measures other than wealth, such as education or position, social movement is not vertical but centripetal. The periph- eralization of a segment of French society is Riding the local commuter rail (RER) to Villiers le Bel, the 9-5. such that at tense moments, police wait at A train-car rapper is visible in the background in a white cap. the RER (France’s commuter rail) stations immigrants who had come in the 1960s and 1970s to fill in the suburbs to prevent the outsiders from boarding the menial positions during the three decades of growth Paris-bound trains and breaching Parisian borders. and prosperity had been in France long enough to be protected from unemployment by iron work contracts The neuf-cinq wasn’t so bad, Tex tells me. It wasn’t and union membership. It was their children and the as bleak as the neuf-trois, which includes Clichy Sous immigrants who came in later years who were jobless Bois, Saint Denis, L’Aubervilliers, La Courneuve and when positions became scarce and the long-time resi- other notoriously poor immigrant neighborhoods. I’ve dents closed ranks. traveled to all of these neighborhoods; as you ride the RER or metro further from Paris, the faces get darker, I met Tex just after my arrival in Paris. A friend in the trains are dirtier, and the ride more boisterous as the music industry in the U.S. recommended him as a public transportation is often a warm gathering place conduit to the French rap-music scene. I wrote to Tex for poor youth with nowhere to go. The RER, in particu- and he invited me to his office in Montreuil, a suburb lar, is distinct for the loud volume of the ride. A fatigued on the outskirts of Paris. His office was difficult to find, commuter isn’t likely to get much rest with rap songs he said, so he gave me directions to a café and said he emanating from mobile phones and aspiring rap groups would walk out to meet me there. I wondered if I would using the train as a practice studio while they beat an ac- recognize him, but when I saw the small fellow with the companying rhythm on the ceiling of the car. For a rap- shaved head, oversized basketball jersey, gold chain and per, coming from the neuf-trois is a mark of authenticity, baggy jeans, I knew he was the man I was looking for. a badge of pride that’s constantly referenced in songs. He looked like a transplant from Brooklyn. But the “neuf-trois” at the beginning of a postal code is a resumé-killer when applying for jobs, according to the Tex gave me a brief rundown of the history of Montaigne Institute, which has studied the response to France’s most prominent rap groups: which ones had similar c.v.’s that differ only in geographic identifiers. been partners before going solo, the changes in style and fashion that they and their audience had undergone Now 39, Tex is old enough to have seen the advent over the years. Then he handed me a few CD’s, told me of rap in France and the changes in the social fabric of his to buy “The History of Rap,” a DVD, and armed with neighborhood. In his early grade school years, Tex says, his recommendations, I went off to FNAC, the large there were only three or four non-white kids; two years electronics and music store in central France, outside later it was half and half. By the time he graduated, there of which I’ve several times seen police frisking young were only three or four white faces left. The early years North African kids. I began looking at albums and asked were in the mid-1970s. By the early 1980s when he was a 20-ish man near me whether he knew anything about in middle school, it was clear that the “trentes glorieuse,” them. He figured out that I was American and said that the 30 years of economic growth post World War II, were in truth, he really preferred American rap.