DR

Even though I never got used to French traditional food at home, I have always loved French food in general, I used to eat things like baguettes, croissants and other typical western food found in restaurants. The French are well known for their delicious and rich cuisine, and they put a high priority on the enjoyment of food.  In that sense, I must admit, I feel French.

At home, my mother has always been cooking both Western and Kabyle traditional food.

The most famous dish in the Kabyle and  North African culture is unmistakably “couscous”,  and it is becoming increasingly popular in France.

 However, there are many different types of couscous depending on the region where it comes from. Moroccans include saffron , Algerians like to add tomatoes, Tunisians   spice up theirs with  harissa and Kabyles add green beans.

 Among the other specialties from the Kabyle culture, there is also the special bread, « Aghroum” which is flat and crunchy. We can have it with “Felfel” for example (not to be confounded with “Falafel”), It is a simple dish made of cooked and crushed pepper mixed up with olive oil.

  DR/  Kabyle bread, « Aghroum »

 It is this mixture of flavour that finally made of me a real foodie[1] person.

 When, in 2009, I moved to England for 8 months, the change of environment also meant I had to forget both the dishes of my Mum and the French gastronomy.     

The thing that first caught my eye was the quantity of take away shops one could find lined up in the streets of the city where I lived. The same dishes would also be displayed in all the fast food restaurants:  “Burgers, Parmesans, Pizzas and Kebabs”.

Junk food was apparently king in this part of Britain, no wonder if the obesity rate in the North East is the highest in the country. In this region, the most popular dish is called the “Parmo” which is a shortcut for Parmesan. It’s a much loved dish made of chicken or pork « fillet » with « béchamel » sauce and a layer of cheese (strangely not parmesan), normally served with chips and a choice of salad: coleslaw or creamed cabbage.

  DR/ Chicken Parmo, also served in restaurants 

Unfortunately, I did not have many opportunities to discover good homemade British food, except for the famous Fish and Chips that I ate in Whitby, a lovely fishing port of the North East coast. Apart from their Sunday dinner and a filling breakfast, I have not experienced the richness of the British culture in terms of food…Far from sharing Jacque Chirac’s opinion who, joking five years ago with Russian leaders, said about Britons: « One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad”. From my experience, I have noticed that unlike what is the case in France, in Britain, eating has not much to do with any form of ceremony. 

However, England  remains a multicultural society, and the multicultural aspect of this country is also reflected in the various dishes offered by the migrants who have come to settle there. The dishes of the newcomers are also part of a certain British heritage.Chicken tikka masala, for example, is so popular that it has even been proclaimed as  British national dish.

  DR/ Chicken tikka masala

      (Could you imagine “couscous” being recognized as a “French national dish”?)

Indeed, the best moments I had were when I was discovering new dishes from other parts of the world thanks to my friends who like me were foreigners. I had the opportunity to taste « jollof rice » from Nigeria, chicken rice and « dahl » from Pakistan, « noodles and moon cakes » from China, « tortillas de patatas », « mojete and patatas Alioli » from Spain, « Polish pickles », « Malaysian coconut chicken » and the best green tea ever made by my dearest Pakistanni pachtoune friends.…

Back in France, I was happy to find again my favourite baguette and my mother’s dishes but I also came back with a heavy heart. To my big surprise, shortly after my arrival, I already missed all the exotic flavours I had discovered during my stay in Britain.  My mind was still full of very nice memories about my eating time in England…

DR

PARIS — France is embarking on a grand experiment — how to diversify the overwhelmingly white “grandes écoles,” the elite universities that have produced French leaders in every walk of life — and Rizane el-Yazidi is one of the pioneers.

The daughter of protective North African parents in the tough northeastern suburb of Bondy, Ms. Yazidi is enrolled in a trial program aimed at helping smart children of the poor overcome the huge cultural disadvantages that have often spelled failure in the crucial school entrance exams.

“For now we’re still a small group, but when there will be more of us, it’ll become real progress,” said Ms. Yazidi, 20. But she is nervous, too. “We’re lucky, but it’s a great risk for us,” she said. “We might never make it” to a top school.

Because entrance to the best grandes écoles effectively guarantees top jobs for life, the government is prodding the schools to set a goal of increasing the percentage of scholarship students to 30 percent — more than three times the current ratio at the most selective schools. But the effort is being met with concerns from the grandes écoles, who fear it could dilute standards, and is stirring anger among the French at large, who fear it runs counter to a French ideal of a meritocracy blind to race, religion and ethnicity.

France imagines itself a country of “republican virtue,” a meritocracy run by a well-trained elite that emerges from a fiercely competitive educational system. At its apex are the grandes écoles, about 220 schools of varying specialties. And at the very top of this pyramid are a handful of famous institutions that accept a few thousand students a year among them, all of whom pass extremely competitive examinations to enter.

“In France, families celebrate acceptance at a grande école more than graduation itself,” said Richard Descoings, who runs the most liberal of them, the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, known as Sciences Po. “Once you pass the exam at 18 or 19, for the rest of your life, you belong.”

The result, critics say, is a self-perpetuating elite of the wealthy and white, who provide their own children the social skills, financial support and cultural knowledge to pass the entrance exams, known as the concours, which are normally taken after an extra two years of intensive study in expensive preparatory schools after high school.

The problem is not simply the narrow base of the elite, but its self-satisfaction. “France has so many problems with innovation,” Mr. Descoings said. Those who pass the tests “are extremely smart and clever, but the question is: Are you creative? Are you willing to put yourself at risk? Lead a battle?” These are qualities rarely tested in exams.

But the schools fear that the government will undermine excellence in the name of social engineering and say the process has to begin further down the educational ladder. The state, they say, should seek out poor students with potential and help them to enter preparatory schools. Of the 2.3 million students in French higher education, about 15 percent attend grandes écoles or preparatory schools. But half of those in preparatory schools will fall short and go to standard universities.

In 2001, Mr. Descoings, 52, who cheerfully admits that he failed the concours twice before passing, began his own outreach program to better prepare less-advantaged students for Sciences Po. Last year, the school accepted 126 scholarship students out of a class of 1,300, and two-thirds of them have at least one non-French parent, he said. But that is a far cry from 30 percent.

One of them, Houria Khemiss, 22, is about to graduate from Sciences Po in law. The daughter of Algerian parents growing up in impoverished St.-Denis in the Paris suburbs, she was pushed by a high school teacher to the special preparatory program. She wants to become a judge, “because then you have a direct impact on people’s lives.” Many at Sciences Po will become the leaders of France, she said, “and because we are there it gives them another point of view.”

Oualid Fakkir, 23, who is graduating with a master’s in finance, said, “It’s very dangerous for France to close its eyes and say, ‘Equality. We have the best values in the world.’ It’s not enough. There has to also be equality of chances.”

…………………………………………………………………………….

But other elite grandes écoles are more specialized than Sciences Po, concentrating on engineering, business management, public administration and science, and they are more concerned about the government’s program.

Pierre Tapie, 52, is the head of the business school ESSEC and chairman of the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, which represents 222 schools.

While he shares the government’s objective of diversity, he said, there is a long educational track before the concours. “We cannot be the scapegoat of any demagogic decision because we are the finest and most famous part of the whole system,” he said. Gen. Xavier Michel, 56, runs École Polytechnique, one of the world’s finest engineering schools and still overseen by the Ministry of Defense. Known as X, the school is extraordinarily competitive, and its students do basic training and parade wearing the bicorne, a cocked hat dating from Napoleon, who put the school under the military in 1804.

“The fundamental principle for us is that students have the capability to do the work here, which is very difficult,” with a lot of math, physics and science, very little of it based on cultural knowledge, General Michel said. Even now, he said, the school takes only 500 students a year, barely 10 percent of its specially educated applicants. “We don’t want to bring students into school who risk failing,” he said. “You can get lost very quickly.”

Despite the misgivings, in February the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, under considerable pressure, signed on to a “Charter of Equal Opportunity” with the government committing the schools to try to reach the 30 percent goal before 2012 or risk losing some financing.

But how to get there remains a point of contention. There is a serious question about how to measure diversity in a country where every citizen is presumed equal and there are no official statistics based on race, religion or ethnicity. A goal cannot be called a “quota,” which has an odor of the United States and affirmative action. Instead, there is the presumption here that poorer citizens will be more diverse, containing a much larger percentage of Muslims, blacks and second-generation immigrants.

The minister of higher education, Valérie Pécresse, argued that French who grow up in a poor neighborhood have the same difficulties regardless of ethnicity.

But the government is examining whether the current test depends too much on familiarity with French history and culture. “We’re thinking about the socially discriminatory character, or not, of these tests,” Ms. Pécresse said. “I want the same concours for everyone, but I don’t exclude that the tests of the concours evolve, with the objective of a great social opening and a better measure of young people’s intelligence.”

The government, with Mr. Tapie’s group, has moved to unify and expand scattered outreach programs from different schools. Copied to some degree from Sciences Po, the program Ms. Yazidi attends tries to reach out to smart children, give them higher goals and help them get into preparatory schools. About 7,000 high school students are currently enrolled, but it is too early to tell whether it will produce a large number of successful applicants.

At one recent session, 10 students, all children of immigrants, were working to pass a special concours for a top business school instead of going right into the job market. Their teacher, Philippe Destelle, pushed them to “look more self-confident” in oral exams and “don’t be afraid to have an opinion.” He told one, “You have the answers, but you don’t trust yourself.”

Salloumou Keita, 22, is vocal and social, but worryingly behind on his math. “We have to prove something,” he said. “There is a look we always get, a questioning — ‘Can he adapt?’ ”

Awa Dramé, is 22, French-born of African parents, confident and talkative. “I don’t mind being a guinea pig, so long as the experiment works,” she said. “Reaching this level was unthinkable before, and I can see myself going higher,” she said. “I’m full of dreams.”

(Suggested to AnOpenEye by Siham Keddouh)

DR

We are in the last week of the 2010 football world cup taking place in South Africa. The month of July has arrived at last. In a few weeks’ time “Paris plage” will attract tourists and Parisians alike. And as it has been the case for 37 years, I will once again turn one year older. The month of July is much appreciated by the younger generation. It is the first month of the long holiday in the academic calendar. That is the period when students have just left school and university and are still around. The habit wants it that before travelling for the holidays they take the time to meet and chill out in the streets of Paris. Lots of parties are then thrown during this period. In the districts of the north east of the capital, July is also the month when some associations display the different projects they have been working on since the beginning of the year.     

DR

In the nineteenth I am particularly interested in two figures often seen as examples in the district. The first one is Christophe Adji Ahoudian, a thirty years old political actor who decided two years ago to organise each year in July a festival aimed at promoting the young talents of the district.  His aim is to go against the prejudices affecting the reputation of the nineteenth. “Yes, in the nineteenth district of Paris not everything is negative”. The district is composed of young talented people Christophe Adji Ahoudian wants to put all spotlights on. This year the Festival is taking place from the 5^th of July till the 9^th of the same month. The different events are also sponsored by people from the district who have become kind of success stories or celebrities in France. Among them are the basketball player Moustapha Sonko, footballer Mohammed Lamine Sissoko and others…. . There is no doubt that in the nineteenth district of Paris the “festival talent” is about to become an institution that nobody would like to miss for any reason. The success of the previous edition is particularly due to Christophe Adji ahoudian’s good knowledge of the district and its different communities. Indeed, before being elected deputy mayor of the XIXth district of Paris, Adji Ahoudian was a social worker helping and accompanying the youth of the district in their education.

DR

The second figure of the nineteenth district I find interesting to focus on is Sadia Diawara and his travelling crew. While those taking part in the festival are busy organising everything for the opening day of the festival; a young entrepreneur and director also in his thirties is with some others heading south. Their project, known as “the Road Tree’P”, consists in travelling south by car and planting trees on their way to Mali. Sadia Diawara, the organiser of “the Road Tree’P”, is not actually from the nineteenth; but working there, he is considered as a resident of the district also known under the name of “twenty minus one”. His reputation in the district is without contest. With a crew of 29 people he has decided for the third time to cross the African continent in order to reach Mali by car. He calls his initiative which is also about to become an institution in the district “an act of solidarity with countries affected by desertification”. In exchange for school materials and equipment the thirty people crew will acquire knowledge and experience in a new environment. Through his initiative Sadia Diawara is building an important bridge between Africa and France which only can but enhance the reputation of the nineteenth district of Paris and its residents.

In the nineteenth district of Paris, the month of July being the month when all the work of the different associations and organisations is evaluated, let’s just hope that the success of these two initiatives this year will inspire some more other youngsters.

DR 

But there is a more troubling aspect to the reaction to the defeat, which has focused on lack of patriotism, shared values and national honor on a team with many members who are black or brown and descended from immigrants.

The philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who has often criticized the failures of French assimilation, compared the players to youths rioting in the banlieues, France’s suburban ghettos. “We now have proof that the French team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia,” he said in a radio interview.

While most politicians have talked carefully of values and patriotism, rather than immigration and race, some legislators blasted the players as “scum,” “little troublemakers” and “guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of a brain,” according to news reports.

Fadela Amara, the junior minister for the racially charged suburbs who was born to Algerian parents, warned on Tuesday that the reaction to the team’s loss had become racially charged.

“There is a tendency to ethnicize what has happened,” she told a gathering of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s governing party, according to news reports. “Everyone condemns the lower-class neighborhoods. People doubt that those of immigrant backgrounds are capable of respecting the nation.”

She criticized Mr. Sarkozy’s handling of a debate on “national identity,” warning that “all democrats and all republicans will be lost” in this ethnically tinged criticism about Les Bleus, the French team. “We’re building a highway for the National Front,” she said, in a reference to the far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Philippe Tétart, a sport historian at the Institut d’Études Politiques, said that the undercurrent of racism was “very unhealthy, but one of the predictable negative outcomes of the World Cup defeat.”

France is confused about its identity and uncomfortable with the growing numbers and sometimes the attitudes of its immigrants and their children, he said. “What is certain is that we are going through in France questions of disobedience, of incivility, of loss of bearings, and this group of irritated young kids is an excessive reflection of those questions.”

In 1998, the French team that won the World Cup was widely praised for its multiethnic nature — black, white and Arab, and seen as a symbol of a more diverse nation. But today, Mr. Tétart said, the talk is the opposite.

Today’s players, he said, “come from a generation who come from the banlieues, and they don’t necessarily have the cultural background to understand what they did.”

Luc Chatel, the education minister, said on television Wednesday that he was “terribly angry” and shocked that Raymond Domenech, the team’s coach, who is blamed for some of the team’s disunity and apologized to the nation for the failures, refused to shake hands with the South African manager after the team’s final game.

“But I’m going to go farther,” he added. “A captain of the French team who does not sing ‘The Marseillaise,’ ” the national anthem, “shocks me, there it is. When one wears the jersey, one should be proud to wear the colors, you’re an example.”

He was speaking of Patrice Evra, who was born in Senegal and who found himself caught between players and managers as the team refused to practice after another black player, Nicolas Anelka, swore at Mr. Domenech and was removed from the team.

Mr. Sarkozy himself called a meeting on the disastrous result on Wednesday, summoning Prime Minister François Fillon, Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot and Rama Yade, the junior sports minister. In a statement, he said he had ordered them “to rapidly draw the lessons of this disaster.”

The racial makeup of the French team has long been an issue on the far right, even in a country where all the French are “citizens” and are supposed to have equal rights. Of the 22-man squad, 13 are men of color, with two born in French territories.

This month, Marine Le Pen, the vice president of the National Front and daughter of its founder, said that she did not see herself in the makeup of the team, whose players behaved as individuals, not as a team, and who were “fighting for advertising contracts more than for their country.”

“Most of these guys,” she added, “consider at one moment that they represent France at the World Cup, and at another they are a part of another nation or have another nationality in their heart.”

In her contempt, which carefully did not mention the factors of race and ethnicity but implied them, she was echoing her father, who in June 2006 criticized the team for containing too many nonwhite players and failing to accurately reflect society. He also went on to scold players for not singing “La Marseillaise,” saying they were not French.

On Tuesday, Mr. Le Pen said that “the myth of antiracism is a sacred myth in France.” He added, apparently with no irony, that he hated politicians who turned the national soccer team into “a flag of antiracism instead of sport.”

Now, the language of Mr. Chatel, the education minister, resonates with the themes of the Le Pens. That reflects, critics say, the general effort of Mr. Sarkozy and his party, over the last few years, to weaken the far right by playing on the same themes of patriotism, nationhood and identity.

DR

About twelve years ago, France was giving itself a new reputation. Cheese, onion and the baguettes, the very symbols of frenchness were replaced by football and the French national team: “Les bleus”. What a nice passport it was at the time for all the French citizens who happened to be travelling abroad. I remember in 2001 being the curiosity of the younger generation in the city of Exeter in England. At the time I used to work in a high school as a French language assistant. During the breaks the children of the school would often come to me and ask me to join them in their football games.  

It was also difficult for them to understand that football was not my sport and that I was rather basketball. In 2000 France was to win the European Football Cup, thus strengthening again the view point that France and football made one entity. Back in France I could notice the impact of those two victories on the French society as a whole. The French football team was characterised by its multi-coloured aspect, with more black football players than white ones. The “marseillais” Zinedine Zidane who was born some thirty years ago from Algerian parents had become the first French ambassador abroad; nevertheless, regarding the fight against racism or the social advancement of ethnic minorities within the French society, the victories of 1998 and 2000 revealed themselves of no avail.

Yet, throughout the country, in all school playgrounds, every boy, no matter their social, ethnic or religious back ground, dreamed of the French national football team. Football and other sports then appeared as the gateway for any coloured child willing to improve his or her condition in life.

During the last decade, the importance of football in France certainly had some positive economic repercussions on society; however, socially speaking, it appeared as a ramping plague alienating from education the most deprived children from the working class districts of Paris and its region. Today, the parents in the poor districts often appear more concerned with a possible sportive career of their children than with their marks at school. Football, more than school, is seen by many French parents as the only profitable investment when it comes to the future of their children. Working in a high school of the nineteenth district of Paris, I personally had the chance to observe the phenomenon.

So no one should be surprised if I say today thank you to the French national football team.  In South Africa this year the French football myth was more than destroyed. The national team is today completely crashed and ruined and I am quite satisfied with this. It is at its lowest level ever. In South Africa, this year, French football players have been indeed the clowns of the tournament. They were kicked out without even winning one single match in three matches. The behaviour and attitude of the players as well as that of the coaching staff was much criticised. But what if the malaise, misunderstanding and division within the French national football team was the just the reflection of a wider division and malaise within the French larger society? With the intervention of the French media and politicians, there is no doubt that the crisis within the national team has become a state affair that will, for sure, fill the headlines of the French newspapers in the weeks to come.

Let’s just hope that in the deprived districts, the French football rout will serve to make people stop thinking that sports rather than school are the gateway to social and economic advancement.

DR

The reason why I have chosen that word is not because I recognized myself in this name. Far from it, this is just the way I feel I have been sometimes perceived in my life.

For those who never came across that expression before:

A “Beurette” is just a female “beur”, in French slang; it designates French-born people whose parents are immigrants from North Africa.

I found that expression very pejorative and I hated the people who called me like that.

 I grew up in a small French town where it was rare to find any immigrants from North Africa.  I was only surrounded by white French people but my family has always been deeply immersed into Kabyle and Muslims traditions. This might be the reason why I was given this etiquette.

I finally moved to these suburbs called ‘banlieue parisienne’, when I turned 18.

 Back to the main topic:

From October 2009 to May 2010, I spent the academic year in the North east of England, working as a French Teacher assistant mainly in a secondary school – (named) Ian Ramsey Church of England School.

I have North-African background, I was born in Algeria but grew up in France, and I was there (in Britain) “to represent” the French culture, for a year, assisting teachers or teaching on my own small groups of children aged between 11 and 15; discussing different aspects of the French culture with them

DR

When I first started working in this school, I was sometimes feeling quite uncomfortable because I wondered: “how someone like me, who is not French “ pure souche” as we say in France, can share and transmit the French culture. But I finally found my way and realized that indeed I am French, strange as it may seem, even though I have no clue about how French wines taste like, I have never ever tasted “cassoulet or quiche aux lardons”… Fortunately for me, France is much more than just porky recipes!

Little by little, I finally thought I could find another way to introduce the French culture just like any “pure souche” French girl.

I was eventually feeling more French in Britain than I had ever felt in France…Weird feeling, indeed.

It was an experience full of surprise. I was very astonished to see how open-minded Britons were, especially regarding religion. While I was trying to find out few things to show about Christmas celebrations in France, some even went as far as to ask me if I wanted to talk about how French Muslims celebrate Eid El Kebir,.

 I also noticed how they remarkably promoted tolerance and integration allowing minority groups to maintain their cultural identities and customs at school; offering for example, Urdu classes in a school called Church of England…Whereas in France the government has always been uncompromising with secularity, banning religious symbols in public schools. I remember the first time I saw in that same school the immigrants’ children from Pakistani background wearing the veil without facing any problem. I then thought of all the problems this same veil was causing on the other side of the Channel.

I used to think that secularity was the best option at school, but my experience there made me seriously reconsider my opinion. I would never have thought it could work well.

However, while the adults seemed quite aware of cultural differences, the teenagers seemed really surprised to hear that I could be French and Muslim at the same time. Once, during a school trip in Toulouse, we were visiting a cathedral.  Some students were being rude and giggling all the time, so I told them to calm down. One of them, a platinum blond, grumbled “I am not Christian, I don’t care’”. “Are you Muslim then?” I said, just to see her reaction. She looked daggers at me as if I was insulting her. I told her that whatever her religion, when she comes to a place of worship, she should behave. Then I said: “By the way, I am Muslim”. Finally deeply shocked, she said “What?! Muslim?! But I thought you were French!”

DR

When it comes to explain delinquency in the deprived areas of Paris the following argument is often to be heard: “Youngsters of immigrant descents do not have in France any successful role model, except from that of the football players or rap singers”. It is true that in a country where it has become a custom from the mass media to denigrate and negatively depict ethnic minorities, in general models for a certain category of the population are scarce. Besides, the case of Karim Benzema who was recently involved in the Zahia scandal also proves that football players just like rap singers are sometimes far from being good examples for the younger generations. This week I decided to focus on people I think could be presented as models for the youth in the nineteenth district of Paris.

Among all the people I know in the nineteenth district of Paris Sadia Diawara is without doubt one of the best models for the younger generation. I first heard about Sadia Diawara some five years ago. At the time I was travelling a lot between the U.K and the nineteenth district of Paris. Sadia Diawara was the founder of the Afternoons of the Memory at Mama Africa restaurant; a meeting that took place once a month, on Sundays, and where discussions and tales about Africa were told in a convivial atmosphere.

Today, once again the name of the 31 year old director and entrepreneur is in everybody’s mouth. Three years ago, Sadia Diawara who has “more than a wallet in his pocket”, launched a project that consists in traveling from the nineteenth district of Paris to Mali; crossing by car countries such as Spain and Mauritania. The initiative is based on mutual solidarity between the French people taking part in the project and the different people encountered on the way to Mali. Equipment in exchange for knowledge is the key element of the initiative. The Africans teach the French how to plant trees in the region and the French provide them with the necessary equipment. During the trip, cultural exchanges take place not only with the villagers but also between the travelling crew. The first objective of the initiative is to fight all united against desertification no matter the differences or the continent we live in. Through the ecosystem Global Warming affects all of us without distinction.  

DR.

From the two previous expeditions Sadia Diawara remembers the good memories. “I will never forget the first time we arrived in the village my parents had left some thirty years ago to come here and make a living”, he once told me before adding. “The planting of the first trees is an experience no one can forget”… “No matter how many trees you’ve planted, each new planted tree gives you the same sensation and feeling of pride”.   

Road Tree’P is an initiative coming from the heart asking no money or support from any government or organisation. “All we need is people coming and taking part in the trip” Sadia says.    He dreams of the day when individuals take the initiative to go on their own and plant trees in order to fight against deforestation and desertification. In every culture and religion the planting of a tree has huge signification. When he grows older Sadia Diawara would like to be able to say to his grandsons: “You see this forest over there I am somehow at the origin of it” …  “This is my legacy to you”. And, this wish of his is, indeed, what makes him great and a model for the younger generations.

DR

I did not know what to write about today. So I decided to write on something I think I master quite well.  Unlike the younger generation I cannot really say I was born in it. But I belong to that generation that partly contributed to its shaping. Yes, people of my age are somehow those who gave French Hip-Hop its present features and values.

I know it is funny to speak so especially when everyone knows that Hip-Hop is American and not French. However it is important to notice that unlike many other countries French Hip-Hop has a proper identity which distinguishes it from the ones of other countries.

Many French Hip-Hop artists are very well known not only in the Paris region but also in the four different corners of the Hexagon. Despite the reluctance from part of the mass media to present Hip-Hop as a genuine art and culture; what was first regarded as a simple movement has along the years transformed itself to become an authentic culture. It is possible today to see different periods and forms of expression of this culture in France.

I will never forget those days back in the early eighties when Sydney, one of the rare and only black TV presenters who appeared on the green screen on Saturday afternoons, used to put some funky atmosphere in every household. Here was a guy older than us who resembled us. He was the big brother of every single uprooted kid who happened to be looking for a new cultural identity different from the one of both their parents and the host community. The movement Sydney was presenting us at the time has now grown up into a real art and culture composed of four different disciplines that are Dance (breakdance and smurf), Graff, DJ, Rap.

  If dance was the first discipline to be broadcasted on TV, easiest forms of expression such as Rap and Graffiti were to become more popular. The nineties are well known to be the decade of the apology of Rap music and Hip-Hop in France. The first generation of sons and daughters born in France from African immigrant descents were so much involved in the expansion of the hip hop culture, that they even became assimilated to it.

However for some business and personal economic reasons most French Rap singers were also progressively forced to adopt a more commercial form of their art, thus emptying it from its very first essence. Expressing one’s grieves and informing the mass on the irregularities in our system was finally replaced by a more Bling, Bling rap, too shy to contradict and denounce the system.

Unlike what was the case in the early nineties most French rap singers nowadays have a very poor knowledge and use of the language they express themselves in. Their lyrics are very often senseless and their music often sounds just like another bad copy of the American sound.

Yes, except for a few rap singers such as Kerry James, Shuriken… etc., it is possible to affirm today that good old French rap is dead. Yet, that seems far from being the death of the French Hip Hop culture. Hip Hop culture as a whole is just about to integrate a new form of expression that for the love and for the sake of this culture I ask the younger generation to use just and only for the advancement our community. Spoken Word Poetry better known in France under the name of Slam is from far the new discipline that could bring back sense and noble values to the street culture a whole generation had to shape in order to give itself an identity.

Enjoy this extract:

http://www.planeteslam.com/TRANSMISSION/DOSSIER%20SLAM/Slam%20dossier%20page%203.htm

There are times when history just seems to repeat itself. I remember six years ago having nearly been in the same situation as the one Clotilde Reiss finds herself in today. At the time I used to work for the French consulate in South Kensington in London. I was on a temporary contract that could just last two or three months. But before I start this short story of mine, let me first explain the case of Clotilde Reiss. Clotilde Reiss is that French girl, aged 24, who was arrested in Iran last June. She had first come in Teheran to work as a lecturer for the academic year 2008-2009. On the day she should have flown back to Paris she was arrested at the airport and charged with plot and conspiracy against the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to the Iranian authorities the French student had taken part in the outlawed demonstrations before and after the presidential elections in Iran. She had sent pictures of the different demonstrations to people in France and written and forwarded to the French consulate in Teheran a report of several pages on the protest movements. At her trial, Clotilde Reiss recognized and admitted the charges held against her.

For the French Minister Bernard Kouchner, however, this is nothing but pure imagination, and conspiracy against the French Lecturer. Clotilde Reiss is “innocent” he claims. Thanks to a bail of 200 000 Euros paid to the Iranian government the young girl is now out of jail, awaiting the end of her trial at the French embassy in Teheran. Let me now tell you about my own experience while working at the French consulate in South London about 6 years ago. At the time I was also doing a PhD in English studies with Sorbonne University in Paris. My subject was “The Integration of the Muslim subculture in Britain at the dawn of the twenty first century, from theory to reality”. Because it was participant research I had to live in Britain for a while in order to get relevant information. Two weeks after arriving in the UK I was lucky enough to find this temporary job at the French consulate. I worked as a secretary, answering phone calls. I did not really appreciate the atmosphere that reigned there; and except for one or two people –among whom the vice consul- most of the people working there were unpleasant to me and even austere. In order to avoid them inquiring and investigating on my account, I judged important to tell them myself what kind of research I was doing in the UK in parallel to that job as a secretary. This could only but have lifted all suspicions that at the time I felt on me.

Strangely enough, the French consul of the time suddenly found himself very interested in the person I was. He particularly wanted to know more about my PhD research and even invited me for lunch in order to discuss all that. His questions were very much focused on the different people I had interviewed for my research, especially the Imam of the city of Exeter in Devon. The second time I was invited by him for lunch he was in the presence of a highly educated French gentleman who spoke Arabic and seemed to know the holly Qur’an by heart. The questions of the latter were even more focused on the different people I had interviewed. I will always remember his interest in my future carrier and above all, this sentence of his: “would you like to collaborate with us later, after completing your PhD?” -The answer was definitely “No!” I later learnt that the highly educated gentleman was working for the “DST” which means the French internal Security Service.

The question now regarding Clotilde Reiss is to understand what relations she had with the French consulate and embassy in Teheran: Was she or not against her will led to give the French authorities information on the protests? To what extent did she took an active part in the protests and their organization? Was she helped or influenced by any foreign authorities to do so? One thing is sure my own experience gives me no doubt that Clotilde Reiss might have been willingly or unwillingly manipulated by the French authorities in Iran. Just like me, she might have been approached by the French authorities, often using academic researchers for their own political aims. Unlike me she might have accepted to play the game and confounded academic research with spying on behalf of the French embassy and consulate.

By Dr. Moustafa Traore

DR

Malian actor renowned for his long association with the director Peter Brook and his work in film

By Andrew Todd guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 May 2010 18.25 BST Article history

The Malian actor Sotigui Kouyaté, who has died aged 73, was an important bridge between African and western culture for 40 years. He was best known for his collaborations with the director Peter Brook, in whose work he demonstrated an extraordinary range.
Kouyaté was one of the very few performers around whom Brook shaped particular projects at the Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. Kouyaté played a resonant Prospero in a French-language Tempest (1990), bringing to the role the sensibility of a culture for whom the supernatural is a practical, everyday matter rather than distant folklore. In the Oliver Sacks-inspired play The Man Who (1993), he effectively effaced his origins, playing various patients (and the Jewish Sacks) with transparency and universality. In Qui Est Là? (1996), an improvisation based on Hamlet, he played Polonius, a gravedigger and a terrifying, uncannily lifeless ghost. In Can Themba’s The Suit (2000), he showed great comic talent, playing a very convincing drunk (although he never touched alcohol) and – in drag – an uproariously funny church woman. Perhaps the apex of his work with Brook was the creation in 2004 of the role of the Sufi mystic Tierno Bokar, in the eponymous play, based on a real-life West African prophet of tolerance and self-sacrifice.
Kouyaté was born in Bamako, Mali’s capital, to Guinean parents, who moved to Burkina Faso soon after his birth. He was the descendant of a long line of griots, a nomadic, noble caste responsible for recounting oral history and resolving conflicts as a form of artistic social duty. He continued in this role throughout his life as one of the world’s most visible African actors and a conscientious, charming witness of his people’s culture. He claimed to belong to the griots’ culture more than to any particular nation.
An extremely tall, willowy figure, Kouyaté’s career was extraordinary even before leaving for Europe. A carpenter, teacher and then professional footballer, he became captain of the Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) national team in 1966. His burgeoning activity as an actor, writer and director led to an early film role in Christian Richard’s slave-history drama The Courage of Others (1982), which brought him to the attention of Brook’s collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, who was travelling the world casting the huge Mahabharata project. Brook instantly knew he was the right actor to play Bhishma, the conduit of wisdom and memory who uses his power to choose the time of his own death to manipulate the outcome of the Mahabharata’s great war. The production was first staged at the Boulbon quarry in Avignon in 1985, and Kouyaté reprised the role in Brook’s five-hour film of the drama.
He had fathered two sons – the film-maker Dani Kouyaté and the actor and storyteller Hassane Kassi Kouyaté – before he left Africa and settled on the outskirts of Paris in 1984, starting a new family with his Swiss wife, Esther Marty-Kouyaté, who he met during the three-year world tour of the French and English versions of the Mahabharata. With her he had a daughter, Yagaré, and a son, Mabo.
Kouyaté described his working experience with Brook as being in direct, harmonious continuity with his life as a griot: he half-expected an uptight, intellectual French troupe, but found instead a multinational group where every voice was respected and concerns shared among a circle, which recalled his origins. « The word, » he once told me, « is the weapon of the griot; one must know how to transport and make a vehicle of speech … which is a difficult art, the prerequisite of which is listening. I have found this listening attitude with Peter Brook. »

Kouyaté’s flourishing film career was pursued in parallel to his work with Brook. His 18 films included collaborations with the directors Thomas Gilou (Black Mic Mac, 1986), Cheick Oumar Sissoko (La Genèse, 1999), Amos Gitai (Golem, Spirit of Exile, 1992), Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things, 2002) and Kouyaté’s son Dani (Keita, Heritage of the Griot, 1994). He was the subject of the documentary film Sotigui Kouyaté, a Modern Griot by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (1996), which followed him on a journey back to Burkina Faso. In London River (his second film with Rachid Bouchareb, after 2001’s Little Senegal) he played a French Muslim father seeking his son, who is missing after the July 2005 terror attacks in London. He described the film as being « made by love ». The performance earned him the best actor prize at the 2009 Berlin film festival.
Sometimes criticised in the western press for a lack of actorly technique or artfulness, he represented a different tradition of performance – not as imitation, but as presence, embodiment and witness. Immensely handsome, immemorially ancient in appearance from his 50s and dangerously dapper when off stage or screen, Sotigui charmed a vast circle of friends and admirers, to whom he was faultlessly generous, whether with his advice, humour or hospitality. He had an unnerving habit of correctly guessing details of one’s state of mind and recent movements when encountered.
An important part of his artistic legacy is the Mandéka International Theatre, which he co-founded in 1997 in Bamako, with the aim of producing and radiating Malian theatre. He is survived by Esther and his four children.
Peter Brook writes: Sotigui was, for all of us who knew him, who worked with him and who became close to him, an absolutely unique person, incomparable with anybody of the past or present, in the same way that Shakespeare and Mozart were their own individual human categories, at once remarkable and universal, uncanny and familiar.
I first saw him in a photograph that Marie-Hélène Estienne showed me: he was standing next to a tree, and he had an extraordinarily tree-like character himself, both physically and personally. He was inseparable from his own African soil, rooted in its social, cultural, family and spiritual structures and traditions. He was deeply animist in the sense that he saw and sensed, as a matter of course, the continuity between the visible and invisible worlds, between inner spirit and external tradition.
At the same time, when he was in the context of the west, he was totally open to the world around him, seeing it clearly in all its good and bad qualities, but without ever judging or becoming hostile. Like a tree, he was unbending in his core, but reaching out, responsive, quivering in reaction to every fine current with which he came into contact.
As an actor he was possessed of a deep sense of meaning and an absolutely natural response; his heart and mind had a transparent connection to his body, his muscles, face and fingers, allowing him an organic expression devoid of applied skill – a condition of emptiness and responsiveness which many western actors strive for years to attain, but which to him came perfectly naturally.
• Sotigui Kouyaté, actor and director, born 19 July 1936; died 17 April 2010