Beur/Maghribi musical interventions in France: rai and rap

Abstract

The article examines three songs from the rai and rap domains which have all, to varying degrees, been hits in France: ‘Partir Loin' by 113 with Reda Taliani, ‘Don't Panik' by Médine, and ‘Même Pas Fatigué' by Khaled with Magic System. The songs raise a number of critical concerns for young North Africans and Muslims living in France and the Maghreb, including: Islamophobic and racist media representations, migration, police violence and social discrimination against banlieue youth, intolerant French secularism, and multi-culturalism. It is through creative interventions such as these that Maghrebis in France are bringing their culture and their socio-political issues to a wider French public.

Keywords:

• France
• rai
• rap
• Algeria
• migration
• banlieue

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Hisham Aidi and John Schaefer for help with translations.

Notes

1. Benny B's 1990 ‘Vous êtes fous’ was the first French rap hit (#3 in the charts). Khaled's 1992 ‘Didi’ (#9) was the first rai hit. Beurs are also involved in several other musical genres that have crossed over (Daoudi and Miliani 2002).

2. On media constructions of the banlieues as a ‘synonym of alterity, deviance, and disadvantage', see Hargreaves (1996).

3. On gangsta rap's rise in the USA (Reeves 2008, 93–115; Chang 2005, 299–329).

4. The situation is analogous to the UK's ‘ethnic love and hate fest’ of the late 1990s Hesse and Sayyid (2005, 27), when an upsurge in extreme-rightist attacks and racist state policies aimed at British Asians, especially Muslims, occurred at the same time as a ‘mainstream passion for all things culturally diverse', especially produced by the suddenly ‘cool’ (South) Asians.

5. Notable rai–rap releases include Rim'K and Chaba Zahouania, ‘Rachid Sytem’ (2004, #35 on the charts); Rim'K and Chaba Zahouania, ‘Clandestino’ (2008, #25); and Rim'K and Chaba Maria, ‘Le Jour Maghrib United’ (2009).

6. K'Mel: ‘You're hired as long as we 've not seen your face’ – a reference to racist hiring practices. Cheb Mami: ‘‘Alā wijhī inkartūnī, ū gultu étranger’ (You did not accept me because of my appearance, and you called me a foreigner). It appears on Cheb Mami's 1999 album Melli Melli. Béru (2011, 71) observes that between 1990 and 2000, duos between rappers and singers from North and sub-Saharan Africa partially supplemented those involving or evoking US rappers.

7. Additional volumes are Raï N'B Fever 2 (2006), Raï N'B Fever 3 (2008), Raï'n'B Fever 3 Même pas fatigué (2009), and Raï N'B Fever 4 (2011). Another influential raï’n'b collection was Des 2 côtés (2004), produced by DJ Kim, a rai DJ, and hip-hop producer DJ Goldfingers. There are many other such collections, many produced in Algeria, sometimes under the name ‘rai r'n'b'.

8. Four of 113's five albums have been certified either gold or platinum.

9. Rim'K (born Abdelkrim Brahmi-Benalla) is verlan (hip French backslang) for Karim.

10. Taliani was born Tamni Réda in 1980 in Algiers’ El Biar district and grew up in Kolea, a town 20 miles southwest of Algiers, where he earned the nickname ‘Taliani’ (Italian) because of his style of dress. His other notable rai–rap collaborations include ‘Cholé Cholé’ (2006), with Rappeurs d'Instinct (on Raï N' B Fever 2), and ‘Inch'Allah', with Grand Corps Malade (2011, #59).

11. Autotune is an audio processor technology used to alter pitch and distort the voice. Ever since Algerian rai artist Chaba Djenet's 2000 hit single, ‘Kwit Galbi Wahdi’ (You Broke My Heart by Leaving Me), auto-tuning technology has been used heavily on rai vocal recordings in Algeria and France (Clayton 2009) Maghrib.

12. Such codeswitching and borrowing dates to the colonial period. On contemporary codeswitching and borrowing between Arabic and French in Algeria and France (Boumedini and Hadria 2013; Caubet 2002, 2006; Davies and Bentahila 2002, 2006; Miliani 2004; Taleb-Ibrahimi 2004; Zelenková 2013).

13. A verlan rendering of racaille, a term of official opprobrium that tough banlieue youth have embraced as a positive designation. Silverstein (2012b) describes French gangsta rap as characterised by a harsh vocal flow, complex layering of samples, and a lyrical concentration on issues of racism and violence. As he shows, on their songs 113 have typically self-represented as ‘marginal’ figures ‘outside the law', as ‘fugitives…presumed to be dangerous', and as ‘street niggaz (négros), ruff in spirit and 100% insubordinate (insoumis)'. Two members of Sarkozy's party, the Union for Popular Movement, publicly condemned Rim'K in 2010 for being ‘racist against whites and the French in general', basing their claim on lyrics (‘Fuck your nation…We've hated the blue uniform since we were young’) from ‘Face à la police', on 113's 1999 album, Les Princes de la ville (Khatibi 2012). For an overview of 113's career (Mortaigne 2010).

14. ‘Rap is social music by definition, it's the cry of the street', Rim'K has stated (S.-J. T 2012).

15. Aomar Boum (personal communication) has found nineteenth-century travel accounts describing the Algerian term for hashish as benji. Possibly ‘benji’ is related to ‘bango', Egyptian slang for hash, and may also refer to ‘banj', or ‘anesthetic', in the Levant. I can find no reference to ‘350'. Laurie King, Bill Lawrence, Alyssa Miller, Laleh Khalili, Bill Kelsey, and Jean-Baptiste Gallopin help me determine benji's meanings.

16. His family is from the town of Barbacha, in Bejaïa Province.

17. As a young man Rim'K used to vacation in Algeria each summer with his family (Binet 2012).

18. Benachour is referring to ‘Partir Loin', often called ‘Ya l'babour’ or ‘Al-Babour'.

19. Unemployment rates for Algerians aged 16–25 were estimated to be as high as 55% in 2005 (Beaugé 2005).

20. The late Cheb Hasni recorded some dozen songs about the problems of obtaining a visa, including the hit ‘El Visa', lamenting how these difficulties prevented the song's subject from joining his beloved (Miliani 2005, 120).

21. From Médine's 2008 mixtape Don't Panik and his 2008 album Arabian Panther.

22. Médine adopts the term from US rap, where it refers to artists like Public Enemy, Dead Prez, KRS-One, or Lupe Fiasco. Médine has, nonetheless, collaborated with several French hardcore artists (Silverstein 2012b, 27), including Rim'KMaghrib.

23. On Médine, see Aidi (2011, 2012) and Silverstein (2012b). His performance name refers to Medina, the second holiest city in Islam.

24. The Open Society Institute and the French National Center for Scientific Research's 2009 study found that in France, black people were six times, and Arabs almost eight times, as likely as white people to be stopped by police for i.d. checks (Open Society Institute 2009). See also Human Rights Watch (2012). On youth–police banlieue relations (Soumahoro 2008).

25. Overall unemployment for French university graduates is 5%, for graduates of North African origin, over 26% (BBC 2005).

26. As of 2009, only one National Assembly member out of 577 was of Maghribi origin (Hargreaves 2009, 313).

27. Of a population of 60 million (2005) about 4–4.5 million are Muslims, about 3 million of whom of North African origin. An estimated three million French Muslims, 5% of the population, are citizens.

28. Bouléhia (būliḥya) is Arabic for ‘bearded guy'.

29. The use of English expressions is quite common in French rap (Zelenková 2013).

30. De Wenden (1991, 99, 108) discusses the emergence during the 1980s of the myth that Islam was a virtually insuperable obstacle to social integration in France. Bayat (2007, 508) reports that a survey of French Muslims found that 87% considered Islam compatible with the French Republic, suggesting that they are much more secularist than mainstream pundits imagine.

31. Fadela Amara, long-time Socialist Party member and founder of Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive), a feminist organisation that fights violence against women in the banlieues, famously contrasted the image of the Beurette, the young French Arab woman who dons mini-skirts and desires liberation, with that of the oppressed woman in a veil (Costa-Kostritsky 2012). Amara has stated that the hijab conveyed a ‘negative image of women’ and constituted ‘a real danger for young women in poor districts’ (De la Baume 2013).

32. Particularly after 1995 when, in response to France's support for Algeria's military regime in the civil war, the Islamist militant group GIA used local recruits, most famously Khaled Kelkal, to launch several terrorist attacks in France.

33. I've not determined whether Mesrine took ‘revenge’ on journalists.

34. Police killing of local youths was a trigger in at least 29 (and possibly 34) of the 48 major banlieue ‘riots’ between 1990 and 2000 (Dikeç 2004, 203).

35. His album Arabian Panther (2008), an independent label release, sold a respectable 25,000 plus copies (‘Médine’ [rappeur]). His 2013 album Protest Song hit #9 on its first week of sales (http://www.chartsinfrance.net/Medine/ProtestSong-a117067024.html).

36. In his 2012 Youtube video, ‘I'm Migrant Don't Panik', Médine elaborates on his artistic and political aims and projects (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnKtEkNZWcI).

37. On Khaled's 2009 album Liberté as well as Raï'n'B Fever 3: Même pas fatigue (2009), but left off the US release of Liberté.

38. In between, he had three Top Twenty singles: ‘El harba wine’ (#20, 2000), ‘Ya-Rayi’ (#11, 2004), and ‘Zine Zina’ (#18, 2004).

39. Hence, the title of his 1998 autobiography, Khaled: Derrière le sourire (Behind the Smile). Khaled turned 54 in February 2014.

40. ‘Gaou’ is rube or fool in Ivoirean slang.

41. Rachida Dati (Minister of Justice), Rama Yade (Secretary of State for Human Rights under the Minister of Foreign and European Affairs), and Fadela Amara (Secretary of State for Urban Policies).

42. In his preface to Khaled's autobiography, Gilles Lhote presents the singer as a symbol of the struggle against fundamentalism and its horrors (Khaled 1998, 9).

43. Médine is active in the anti-racist Mouvement des Indigènes de la République. Reda Taliani performed at a September 2010 concert called Rock sans papiers, aimed at criticising the government's shameful treatment of the undocumented (Lafitte 2010).

44. According to his documentary ‘I'm Migrant Don't Panik'.