Discourse and Dissemination of the French Language from Paris to Dakar
Introduction
Hip-hop is a social movement in and of itself. It reflects on, critiques, and produces its own ideologies pertaining to a country’s governance and current political discourse. Issues that transform the messages of hip hoppers, MCs and rappers are rooted in their identities. Cultural identities are formed through observation, active listening, interpretation, and appropriation to modern aesthetics and international trends. The formation of an identity is pedagogic. It necessitates language and corporal expressions, traditionally through the act of story telling, rituals and celebrations of life.
This blog seeks to determine the roots of dissent, hybridization and commodification of the French language starting in the ghettos of the Bronx, emerging in the banlieus of Paris, and evolving in the neighborhoods of Dakar, Senegal.
Hip-hop is immensely interdisciplinary. It encompasses: musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology, psychology, economics, African American and Africana studies, political science, foreign language, education, the list goes on…
The glocalization of hip-hop has proved successful due to its multi-disciplinary nature. Cultures around the world have embraced hip-hop and rapping as an innovative way to voice concerns on their local issues. These grass-roots inspired issues come from musician’s personal experience in their homes, their neighborhoods, and most likely, in the urban centers they reside in. Often matters addressed by individual rappers relate to residents across the country facing similar strife.
“Cultural identity… is dialogic, or polydialogic; it brings to the fore a ‘need to stage authenticity in opposition to external, often dominating alternatives’… In the process, ‘[T]he roots of tradition are cut and retied, collective symbols appropriated from external influences,’ thus, ‘twentieth century identities no longer presuppose continuous cultures or traditions'” (Krims 94).
In France-proper, those that rap in French represent diverse ethnicities and places of origin. This diversity is evident. Regional differences affect various styles, rap flow, lyricism, themes, as well as target audiences. Cultural identity and differentiability assert authenticity.
A Brief History of Modern Language Appropriation in France
France is the world’s second largest hip-hop market and fifth largest global music market in the world. It only constitutes for 7% of the world’s music sales but overall, the music industry is well supported by its citizens (Mitchell 12).
The banlieus of Paris house French Caribbean and West African music groups, MCs and rappers.The world got a glimpse of the realities within the banlieus in Matthieu Kassovitz’ 1995 film, La Haine (The Hate), that addresses issues of racism, stereotyping and discordances with the police and native French youth. The movie’s soundtrack included emerging Francophone and French MCs including: IAM, MC Solaar, Sens Unik, as well as La Cliqua, Les Sages PoeAaates de la Rue and Ste. Strausz.
Hip-hop became popularized in France in the mid 1980’s, although it arrived in the country in 1979 (after the release of Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight). Although French hip-hop today is quite distinct and diverges from old-school American hip-hop styles, originally many MCs imitated the US style and free-styled American beats.
Senegalese men, and other North and West African people and families, began to emigrate to France in hopes of creating a better life abroad. Many often felt obligated to leave in order to support entire families back at home. Those that did become financially affluent became key in linking the music of French MCs and American hip-hoppers to Senegal, physically importing records when they would travel between Senegal and France. In the beginning of rap in Senegal, artists would self-record over the instrumental B-sides of these imported hip-hop records that they would not have otherwise had access to (Appert 44).
Adaptation during the 1990’s also introduced hard-core rap and Zuluism, encouraging MCs to develop their own styles and French flow. The 1990’s saw the emergence and great success of the groups IAM, Aktivist, and artist MC Solaar, among others. Radio stations and DJs also found great success, including Rapper Dapper Snapper, BA Crew and DJ Dee Nasty.
“And even after all my logic and my theory
I add a “Motherfucker” so you ‘ignant niggas hear me
Crew member takes notes, as I sow my rap oats
And for you biting zealots, here’s a quote”
-Lauryn Hill singing Zealots, the Fugees, The Score
African-American culture and musical styles were adopted by emigrated French youth. They related to messages of marginalization and discrimination, taking the realities of American youth from the Bronx to be the same as their own lives in the banlieus. Youth in Marseille of North and West African heritage also strongly related to the messages of N.W.A. and Public Enemy. It is estimated that about 20% of the population of Marseille is Muslim; large neighborhoods within this port city speak exclusively Arabic or native dialects. Hip-hop, free-styling and hardcore rap in this city have created their own dialect, or pigeon, that adopts a combination of Arabic, French and English. “Although only six percent of the French population consists of non-European immigrants, rap and hip hop have become a vital form of anti-racist expression for ethnic minorities” (Berger 7).
Rap is used by youth to speak against oppression, misrepresentation, racism, anti-religious sentiments (especially anti-Islamic) and oppression, both socially and institutionally. It also allows youth to express their dual narratives as French residents and persons within their respective ethnic communities. The atmosphere and flow of free-styling has created unique slang and innovative vocabulary.
“Hip hop is not simply replacing the culture that came before it but truly overwhelming that generation altogether” (Boyd 5)
In 1998, Sorbonne Prof. Jean-Pierre Goudaillier published a dictionary entitled, Comment tu tchatches? This compilation of urban French slang was controversial to say the least, as it introduced the Francophone world to the witty, multi-lingual vocabulary of the marginalized youth of the banlieu. Many slang words in the dictionary represent a mélange of various dialects, including Arabic, Creole and Gipsy. Mixed words and syllabically reversed vocabulary, known as verlan or veul, mocks the regimentation of the French language. However, besides the use of slang and such vocubulary, foreign French rappers also embrace the beauty, easily applicable rhyme scheme, and richness of this classic language. For the first 15 years of rap in French, nearly all MCs embraced French as their language of choice.
“The global indigenization of rap and hip hop has involved appropriations of a musical idiom which has become a highly adaptable vehicle for the expression of indigenous resistance vernaculars, their local politics, and what Kong calls the ‘moral geographies’ of different parts of the world” (Berger 15)
The development of slang, the use of native languages as well as French (used in the schooling system) illustrates the complex and articulate culture that has developed out of hip-hop culture. Goudaillier’s dictionary was one of the first manifestations of language hybridity that forced the French to re-evaluate their understanding of Francophone culture.
From the Bronx: The Adaptation and Appeal of US Hip Hop
Hip-hop has evolved in France, as it has in the US and around the world. Those that embrace the essence of hip-hop culture, which includes free-styling, rap battles, b-boying, and (has evolved to include) fashion as well as ‘street’ culture. This is also further individualized with customs, heritage and community, constantly redefining what ‘Blackness’ means to these artists. With each new generation and evolving era of hip-hop, MCs redefine the identities they strive to embody. These redefinitions are, at times, off putting to older generations, displacing their understanding of the world and the culture that their children and their children’s children will grow up in.
“I like to listen to rap like Public Enemy… I saw the way black men liked the music and the way they searched for their own voice” (Berger 23).
Part of the appeal of the American hip-hop industry is the idea that success is tangible within a population of people that, in the 1980’s especially, never have the guarantee of success. Financially affluent and victorious rappers were seen as role models that overcame political, economic and social hardships.
“Subcultures borrow from the dominant culture, inflecting and inverting its signs to create a bricolage in which the signs of the dominant culture are ‘there’ and just recognizable as such, but constituting a quite different, subversive whole” (Krims 95)
The civil rights movement raised concerns about seclusion, limited access to resources due to discrimination/racism (education, housing, job opportunities, etc.), as well as these citizens’ right to change the way they were being treated and to make decisions on their own accord. The movements, marches, clashes with police, the speeches given by MLK and Malcolm X all define the Black American story that continues to be fought. French emigrant populations as well as African peoples experiencing neo-colonialism, all relate this history and will to keep fighting for their rights.
Brief overview of black music in the US: Africans are imported as slaves -> During Reconstruction blacks in the South have personal time and many make/can afford their own instruments = Blues -> Jazz from Creole culture in New Orleans -> Creation of the Black church = gospel -> 60’s popularizes gospel and soul -> Commodification of black music / mainstream music = Motown and Disco -> Civil Rights movement’s music -> Sugarhill Gang = free-styling & hip hop -> Afrika Bambaata, graffiti, b-boying -> Public Enemy & N.W.A. = Gangsta Rap -> Wu Tang Clan (30+ members) – collectivity, creativity, ideological lyrics and messages associated with Islam, social injustice and controversial realities of life in the US (Appert 26) …
“Many crews can relate
Who choosing your fate (yo)
We went from picking cotton
To chain gang line chopping
To Be-Bopping
To Hip-Hopping
Blues people got the blue chip stock option
Invisible man, got the whole world watching
(where ya at) I’m high, low, east, west,
All over your map
I’m getting big props, with this thing called hip hop”
-Hip-Hop, Mos Def, Black on Both Sides
Interestingly enough, white youth (such as myself) in both the US and France have also been attracted to hip-hop and their messages to generate equality and justice. Hip-hop culture today is far from what is as in the 1980’s. It has been commercialized, marketed to attract white audiences, sexualized, and packaged for marketable purposes.
“Hip hop, a genre of music once dismissed as mindless noise, has become a social force, having climbed out of the ghetto, having now moved out of the ‘hood and across the globe, serving notice to all who would take heed that many of these old civil rights paradigms have at last been commodified and at worst have simply passed on” (Boyd 12).
A Senegalese Spin on Hybridity: A French MC, the Pioneers of Hip Hop Galsen and Observations by Prof. Appert
MC Solaar
One of the more famous internationally renowned Senegalese rappers was born in Dakar and moved to France at a young age. MC Solaar, born Claude M’Barali, embodies the duality of the Francophone world. He gained a significantly large fan base in the US in the late 1990s, attracting acid jazz and jazz-rap fans after his appearance on Guru’s Jazzmatazz project. Together they made the song Le Bien Le Mal, rapping in both French and English. This song was featured as a track on the charity album, Red, Hot + Cool, which raised money to encourage awareness and educate people on HIV and AIDS.
For more information on the Red Hot project and their initiatives to fight AIDS through popular culture, visit their website. Solaar also collaborated with Gang Starr, as Guru was a member of collective, producing the song, Le Tempto.
Solaar collaborated with Gang Staar and Guru to make a name for himself abroad. His ability to converse in English helped him work in the US, although he has yet to rap in English. His fluidity, clever rhyme scheme and recognizable cultural references make up for the language barrier for his English-speaking fans. Solaar is well regarded in Senegal, but is quite disconnected from his roots in Dakar. He has found that his most prevalent fans are both black and white French youth. Solaar is a more reserved example of hybridity, or rather, a more mainstream representation. He sought out help from American hip-hop stars at the beginning of his career, setting him up for attention from the media and a widened fan base for the rest of his career. Social issues, questions of identity and inspiration are among some of the topics this MC addresses in his songs.
Solaar is especially strong at weaving internal rhymes into his narratives, layering puns and playing with colloquialisms, as well as his ability to pair personal stories with larger pictures, all the while using street slang and Francisismes. This all contributes to his unique flow and signature style.
“His gift for language and ability to explore — in a positive light — contemporary issues that trouble his adopted homeland, have made MC Solaar the “thinking person’s rappeur.” Claiming such diverse sources of inspiration as Rimbaud, the Bible and Jean Jacques Rousseau, Solaar raps about serious problems such as crime and AIDS in a way that’s half French poetry, half African storytelling and completely enthralling. While much of American hip hop challenges with anger, MC Solaar exhibits a rare bravery in his willingness to explore issues through a wide range of human emotions.”
Source: WineXMagazine
Listen to an interview with MC Solaar and his DJ, Jimmy Jay, on Yo! MTV Raps!, a popular afternoon TV program and MTV’s first hip-hop music show on the network (1988-1995).
Check out two of his other more popular songs to hit the US in the late 1990’s; English subtitles included:
Want to read more about this master MC? Here is an interview with Margo Berdeshevsky, from 2007
Here is an excerpt:
Margo: What is your genius?
Solaar: It’s the rhythm, (he nods) and my interpretation. I know that by the eighth phrase, there has to be shock, poetry, even the excessive. My professors taught me that there must be a structure, a situation, a thesis, an antithesis, a point of view, a climax. And I become RAEL… I am an angel lawyer, he will tell me in the course of our interview. I am called RAEL, my vocation is to defend, a defending angel for a point of view. And it ends with regret, in which you realize there is something better.
Margo: An Aristotelian formulation…
Solaar: (He beams) Oui. Oui. C’est ca.
Positive Black Soul and the Ground-breakers
Positive Black Soul, PBS, was the first Senegalese rap duo to find major international success and fame. The duo, Didier Sourou Awadi (DJ Awadi) and Amadou Berry (Doug E./ Duggy-Tee) created the group in 1989. This group truly put Senegal on the international hip hop market. PBS owes part of their claim to fame to MC Solaar, who opened for the group at a concert at the French Cultural Center in Dakar in 1992. The concert led to international recording opportunities at a time when other aspiring groups had no such chance. Shortly after their popularization and record release, groups Peefrois, Daara J and, later, Yatfu, emerged, soon finding international success as well.
All four groups mentioned originally only rapped in French, hoping to attrack audiences from outside Senegal. They sought to reach Francophone communities not only in Africa, but in France and their DOM TOMS (départements et territoires d’outres mers). However much they strove to gain recognition outside of the country, the strongest support, it seemed, was within Senegal. In 1998, another popular group, Rap’Adio produced the album, Ku Weet Xam sa Bop (s/he who is alone knows her/himself), using exclusively Wolof lyrics to address the hard-hitting issues that had been addressed by earlier groups. This album “struck a chord with Senegalese youth, who found in this music something that they could identify with — not just a globalized music but a localized one” (Appert 45). After the immense support for this record, other groups also began to make entire albums exclusively in Wolof, whereas before albums were heavily in French with some Wolof.
PBS made music and performed in a mixture of Wolof, French and English. The group “identifies itself in English in relation to African-American rap as ‘a brother man from another land known as the motherland'” (Berger 5). One of their earliest songs, Respect the Nubians, begins with a chorus chanting in Wolof, but the entirety of the song is otherwise rapped in English. Although their work was not popular in the US, their first years on the hip-hop scene remained imitational, using US-inspired beats and making as many songs as possible in English. The second language of choice, was, of course, French. Their song, Djoko, which means unity in Wolof, was one of their first songs sung exclusively in Wolof.
Throughout their careers, PBS never failed to incorporate concerns specific to Senegal, especially the residents of Dakar, in their music. A lot of their work deals with issues of misrepresentation in the government, French economic monopolies, youth’s desires to change their futures. Their messages inspire the spreading of peace, democracy, and independence from colonial predecessors. Both artists, as well as prominent rapper Keyti, know that the power of their music lies in the way their words are spit, or spoken. This power is “aggressive, heavily punctuated, hard down on the beat, and laid back and cruised, rhyming ahead of the beat, on top of it, and around it, orbiting it like a moon” (White 52). They each have a specific style and flow, each using different plays on words, puns, cultural nuances, as well as layered and controversial political statements and personal narratives. Their power accounts for their popularity and success.
In 1997 PBS collaborated with KRS One in a song, rapping verses in Wolof and English, that appears on their most multi-lingual album, New York, Paris, Dakar. The album starts with a song entitled L’Afrique and is followed by PBS, which promotes the message of the album in English, French and Wolof. The song begins with a chant, “The old to the new, the new to the old,” going on to explain the lineage and rich musical dialogue between these three hip-hop capitals.
Despite PBS’s efforts to embrace the multilingual realities of hip-hop culture, they did not have as much support within the international music market as one would think. English translations were included even in albums performed entirely in Wolof (as an extra sleeve inside the CD case). In Senegal, however, PBS is still extremely popular. Each MC has made profitable solo careers, but often come together to perform for benefit concerts and the like. Check out DJ Awadi and Duggy-Tee’s music online. Both artists, as well as the other groups mentioned earlier, create music that also incorporates traditional musical instruments, morals and stories while maintaining the clear frame work and style of hip hop music and culture.
Catherine Appert’s Observations of Senegalese Hybridity, from her dissertation, Modernity, Remix: Music as Memory in Rap Galsen (2010-12)
Professor Appert defines hybridity specific to Senegal as such: “The intersections of musics and discourses that reflect and produce locally-grounded global interconnection in Senegalese hip hop can be read as performances of strategic intertextuality that, through an active engagement with musical genre and in dialogue with local and global markets, alternately blur or rein scribe the boundaries of indigenous and diasporic cultural production” (3).
Senegalese people have strived to reestablish their sense of self while rejecting the oppressive ideologies of colonialism and embracing new forms of urbanity since their independence form France in 1966. This has not been a simple process. Senegal is an especially multi-layered and deeply woven country that shares aspects of its identity with Portugal, France and Britain. The open nature of hip-hop music allows artists to voice their opinions and personal associations with these relationships. The Diaspora shapes how shaping people within the continent of Africa think of themselves connected to international black communities. Hip-hop comes out of a process of understanding and re-evaluating diasporic strategies/forms of representation and expression.
Part of the attraction to true hip-hop is it’s essentially oral identity. Before European interjection, stories and traditions were passed orally from one generation from the next. The next quote explains the contentions of modernizing aspects of tradition… forcing them to remain a purely historic:
“Aspects of African life that had previously been flexible, allowing for continuity and change in response to the needs of the community, were heralded as timeless, fixed custom by colonial authorities, who codified these customs as static tradition, particularly through the act of writing them down (Ranger 1983)” (33).
This is not to say that the Senegalese have always rejected European artistic styles. During colonialization, the Senegalese embraced European and Latin American musical styles including ballroom, jazz, and Afro-Cuban music played by popular dance bands in lounges, clubs, private parties and bars (37). These genres remained unaltered into the 1960’s and 1970’s. Some hip hop artists manipulate these genres to create unique beats and rhythms for their songs, while the popularity of these dance forms is still prevalent in clubs & for dance classes.
I encourage anyone who is interested to read parts or the entirety of Catherine’s dissertation, which further explains the significance of griots, mbalax, tassu, and the complexities of identity through music in Senegal. Additionally, to learn more about specific Senegalese rappers, MCs and hip hop groups, please read through pages 62-84 of Prof Appert’s dissertation. Catherine states that “rappers position themselves as modernized bearers of ancient tradition,” (95) and later says, “Dakar rappers therefore understand their own hip hop practice, in its adherence to an invented hip hop tradition, as actually being more authentic than contemporary American hip hop” (113).
DJ Awadi explained to Prof Appert the importance of adjusting language to local and international audiences:
“I rap a lot in French. Because I’m not only listened to in Senegal. So French is bigger and I don’t only want to speak to Senegalese but to Africa in general. But certain things you should say in Wolof when it’s a theme that is specific to Senegal. I rap in French and in Wolof but if I spoke Swahili I’d rap in that- I’m not someone with linguistic barriers. If you only do Wolof your music will stop here unfortunately” (147).
Awadi has the luxury of being comfortable in both French and English, but the newest generation of rappers in Dakar come from poorer neighborhoods. Many speak minimal French, and some do not know how to read or write, composing and preserving their lyrics mentally. “The choice between Wolof and French or English is thus based on myriad factors, including audience, class background of the artist, and the complicated dynamic between pride in and responsibility to local origins and communities and the desire for financial stability that is symbolized in international market success” (151).
In contrast to Awadi, who is often referred to as the grandfather of Senegalese hip-hop, local rappers prefer to rap in Wolof. They want this music to stay local, to encourage communication in their communities and to spread messages of change within their country alone. If local rappers do want to “make it big,” they have to create a foundation. They must be respected and supported by their nation first, and then adopt a second language to bring them into another hip-hop circle (either in France or the US).
Rapper Toussa said, “…To succeed, you have to win [a public] where you are. So you rap in Wolof, and then for other people to know [what you are saying] you use other languages” (148). Easier said than done. All Senegalese rappers understand that if they want to make money off of their work, they need to bring their music to the US or France (for it to even have a chance). Unlike most American rappers and hip hop stars, the Senegalese did not express (to Prof. Appert) a concern for financial success, “…it has to do with a belief in the significance of the messages rappers bring in their music and a desire to share this with a larger audience” (149).
Senegalese rappers are constantly trying to improve their flow, diversifying their vocabulary, and creating new appealing styles and lyrics. Rappers in Senegal specifically “prioritize aesthetics as a practice of global connectivity over linguistic accessibility for an international market” (152). Catherine Appert states that rappers spend hours in the studio recording and re-recording their songs, even correcting each others’ Wolof grammar and dictation. By perfecting their practice in Wolof, Senegalese rappers have truly been able to make hip-hop Galsen their own.
“Senegalese rappers understand hip hop as a continuation of local, pre-colonial forms of performance practice that survived the middle passage to the Americas and have returned hundreds of years later via global flows of commodified culture” (58).
————————————————————————————————-
Interested in continuing to follow news, album releases and new songs by popular Senegalese rappers and MCs? Check out this website !
Senegalese rappers Xuman and Keyti have created a news series, Journal Rappé, a bi-weekly international and continental report completely rapped in both French and Wolof, aired on a local news-broadcast channel. All the newscasts are posted online; subscribe to their YouTube channel
Read an article on this recent revolutionary delivery on news, here, or a (translated) interview with the rappers, here
————————————————————————————–
Bibliography
Appert, Catherine M. Modernity, Remix: Music as Memory in Rap Galsen. Diss. University of California, Los Angeles, 2012. Los Angeles: University of California, 2012. Print.
Benga, Ndiouga Adrien, Palmberg, Mai, and Annemette Kirkegaard. “Chapter 5: “The Air of the City Makes It Free,” Urban Music from the 1950s to the 1990s in Senegal Variété, Jazz, Mbalax, Rap.” Playing with Identities in Contemporary Music in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet in Cooperation with the Sibelius Museum/Dept. of Musicology, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, 2002. 80-84. Print.
Berger, Harris M., and Michael Thomas Carroll. “Chapters 1 & 2.” Global Pop, Local Language. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2003. 3-53. Print.
Boyd, Todd. The New H.N.I.C. (head Niggas in Charge): The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop. New York: New York UP, 2002. Print.
Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Mitchell, Tony. Global Noise: Rap and Hip-hop outside the USA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2001. Print.
White, Miles. From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Performance of Masculinity. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2011. Print.