Category: "Music, literature, arts..."

07/10/06

12:16:52 pmCategories: Places, History, Music, literature, arts...

Indigènes

I’ve just been to see the film Indigènes. I don’t cry very often at the cinema, but I must admit that I had problems stopping weeping during the last part. I, and probably the rest of the audience, knew just too well how the film would end and how the story it self would go on for decades afterwards. I saw it on a cinema nearby, with pensioners (white) and local lycéens (of all colours). It shows on 31 cinemas in Paris, with 4-8 screenings each + two in the weekends.

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04/10/06

02:59:46 pmCategories: Spaces, Music, literature, arts...

Back in Belleville! (and le monde writes about the slam scene)

I’m back in Paris for 9 days, and this time I’ve settled right in the heart of Belleville, in the Tunisian Jewish neighbourhood (where they’re just about to celebrate Yom Kippur, I think…). A few blocks from the hotel, I’ve found a café with wifi – a café where they also arrange slam sessions, which of course fits perfectly with my intention to get some intensive fieldworking done while I’m here. So, now I sit blogging right at my favourite boulevard :) (Café Cheri(e) is undoubtedly quite trendy now, and it has in fact it's own blog...).

And talking about intensive fieldworking; while I’m here I can keep myself occupied every night with going to various slam sessions, and these 9 days of intensive focus on slamming started really well as I opened Le Monde (1-2/10/06) on the plane and found that they had dedicated a whole page to the French slam scene!

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08/09/06

10:20:23 pmCategories: Fieldwork, Music, literature, arts...

Some French slam poetry web sites

Oh, no not one of those days… Here I sit, it’s Friday evening, people I know get together to drink beer not far from here right at this moment, I could be there, or I could go to see Resistance(s), a screening of short films from North Africa and the Middle East at the Cinemathèque, but no, what am I doing, yes, I sit at my office, looking out of the window at the excellent weather… - well, now the full moon is up… - doing some kind of silly quasi-academic work… And it will take me ages to get all these links right…

Time is overripe for finding out more about slam poetry, the phenomenon by way of which I’ll try to understand and describe La France Métissée. I bumped into the Parisian slam scene with almost no prior knowledge, and for two months I hung around at various slam soirées in eastern Paris and her hot suburbs, just experiencing what was going on.

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31/08/06

- my research project so far (part 2): Parisian slam poetry vs British Asian ethnogenesis

In the second part of my presentation, I moved on to the particular field where I hung around and conducted anthropological fieldwork proper; thus participated as I observed or vice versa. As some will already know, that field is a slam poetry scene in Paris. I’ve written about it here already, and I’ll surely return to it, so I’ve not found it worth translating that part of my presentation here. Instead, I’ll reflect a little around the comparison I’m intending to make between the slam poetry phenomenon in Paris and the cultural expressions which constituted a core element in my study in London. In the third and final part of this post, I’ll try to recall the questions I got after my presentation.

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22/07/06

Slam poetry


Slam 'aleikum - slam poetry soirée in Saint Denis (93)

I realised last night – dozing uncomfortably under rather dramatic circumstances, in the midst of a thunderstorm lightening the sky and with the wind making slamming windows and shutters throughout the street, and not to mention the pool of sweat from the perpetual heat wave as well as my untimely cold – that it’s about high time I write about what I’m actually doing here.

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18/06/06

02:21:57 pmCategories: Politics, Music, literature, arts...

La rage du peuple

Clearly this sunny Sunday is not made for sitting at home writing blog posts (nor is my head today, I notice as I try to express myself in English…), so I’ll just be very brief before I head off to my “office” in the shade of a tree in Parc Floral (Vincennes). (It’s a beautiful park in itself, and every Saturday and Sunday there are excellent and free jazz concerts there all summer, which makes it a perfect place for sitting down with a notebook and reflect on the last days’ events).

But before I go, I just have to share this video I just came across (as usual via Paris.Indymedia). Someone had already told me to check out the young rapeuse Keny Arkana from Marseille; - and her La Rage du Peuple (now with English subtitles!) is certainly great indeed. This video, with its' lyrics and aesthetics capture so much of what’s going on in France (and the world) at the moment. I know this sounds a bit strange, exotic and perhaps even slightly ridiculous to Norwegian readers (oh, please someone, tell me that I’m mistaken...:) ), but I’m not getting the least surprised when someone is starting to talk about la revolution mondiale (global revolution). But that’s it for today, now I’m off to the park with my notebook, to do some writing on the previous nights’ discussions on, amongst other things, the rage of the people.

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