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Published on March 14, 2007 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Fieldwork, Music, literature, arts...

Friday 9th of March, Café Culturel, Saint Denis (93)

This evening I should have been on the 129H’s monthly slam session at Lou Pascalou, in Rue Panoyaux next to Metro Ménilmontant. 129H is one of the older slam collectives. I’ve seen the members around on various events, but not yet on their monthly open microphone soirée.

However, I’m almost a little relieved that I finally have caught the Parisian spring cold, so I can spend a few days at home, trying to catch up with what has been going on the last week. I’m starting to get the reputation of being on all events “everywhere”. It’s a nice reputation to have, but very tiring indeed to keep up with….
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Dgiz with the classical flutist Sylvaine Helary at L’Olympic Café.

The last five days, I’ve listened to at least 12 hours of slam poetry performances. Yesterday, I was at L’Atelier du Plateau, in a neighbourhood theatre in Rue de Plateau, (in 20eme Arr., not so far from where I live), where the slammeur and rapper Dgiz [site myspace – the second video from the top is a promotion for his slam session at l’Atelier] hosts a session about every sixth week. His soirées are said to be among the best in Paris. Yesterday he had invited an excellent cellist to accompany the poems. If I had remembered to take a photo (I was busy filming), you would have seen a fine example of the combination of high art and banlieue streetart I mentioned in a previous post. Dgiz looks and talks as someone who’s grown up in the ‘hood, but his soirée slam goes well with cello music and poetry from people of all ages and social backgrounds. (A contrast and combination I’m quite sure he accentuates with purpose). For instance, of the more than 40 performances yesterday, about 1/4 were by people at least 50 years old…

There is of course a lot more than the age of the participants to be said about this soirée, but I’ll not go into detail here. Instead, I’ll move back one day to the l’après midi slam I attended at the History and Art Museum in the suburb Saint Denis. It was the third time in four days I’d taken metro line 13 to Saint Denis: This afternoon was hosted by Ami Karim and John Pucc’Chocolat, colleagues of the 500 000 copies-selling slammeur Grand Corps Malade who had won two prizes on the French music award ceremony the night before for his album Midi 20. (Prizes for album and artist discovery of the year.) The slameur-euses at the museum were predominantly from Grand Corps Malade’s weekly workshop for writing in Saint Denis, consisting of pensioners and youth, while the audience was from the age of 7 to at least 70.

One of the things I find great about this workshop (where I sometimes participate/observe) is how it brings together the (white) elderly people of Saint Denis and the youth (of all colours) of today’s France.

Saturday I didn’t go to Saint Denis, but filmed a poetry show on request from the performing poetess at Theatre de la Providence just up the road here in Belleville. La Providence hosts slammeur-ueses throughout Le printemps de poètes. I was there filming another performance last Monday (O-Mind with Ucoc and Chantal Carbon).

On the international woman’s day on Thursday, I listened to members of the Saint Denis writing workshop again, as well as the all woman slam collective Slam ô Feminin. Slam ô Feminin was created 4 years ago, at the 8th of March, exactly at the Café Culturel in Saint Denis where I heard them now. This café, next to the old basilica in Saint Denis, is a corner stone in French slam – they’ve been hosting slam sessions for several years.

On Friday, the oldest cohort of slammeur-euses was gathered at the same café on a closed event (which stirred some resentment, as one of the definitions of French slam is that it’s an open mic…). Grand Corps Malade, Souleymane Diamanka, Dgiz, Chantal Carbon from Slam ô Feminin… and almost 40 others performed their texts. I was watching the crowded café from an excellent view in a staircase amongst the slammeurs whom I now exchanges la bise with, and was thinking about the first time I was here at Café Culturel in the summer, listening to the poems from the outskirts of the circle, not being able to see much else than the peoples’ backs, the Saint Denis shopping centre and the basilica… After finally finding a focus for my thesis in early June and got back to Paris after an autumn in Norway, my research is progressing so rapidly that I have a hard time following…

This week I hope to make use of my timely cold to stay at home and keep still for a moment to get an overview over what I’m doing. (For instance; am I going to focus on open microphone events, on poetry workshops, on persons extending to the theatre and other performances they do… I have already a pile of poetry texts I’ve just started to look at and which I certainly must read all of before I start interviewing people…). All there is on the agenda the first half of this week is a workshop with homeless people arranged by Slam ô Feminin, and a slam session at the Mental Hospital Sainte Anne in relation to Le Printemps de Poètes. I finally hope to get some rest and some order.

Friday 9th of March, Café Culturel, Saint Denis (93)

This evening I should have been on the 129H’s monthly slam session at Lou Pascalou, in Rue Panoyaux next to Metro Ménilmontant. 129H is one of the older slam collectives. I’ve seen…

Art in the suburbs

Published on February 15, 2007 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Distinctions, Music, literature, arts..., Peculiarities, Places, Spaces

Slameur and musicians in a forum culturel in the suburb

Following the Parisian slam scene immediately led me to the suburbs. During my 9 months long first stay here, I crossed la pheripherique (ring road) only five times (except to go to the airport). Three times in the summer I attended open microphone slam events; two in Saint Denis (by Stade de France which one can se on the way to the airport) and one in Fontenay-sous-Bois (to the south east). Saint Denis is well connected to the metro system, Fontenay-sous-Bois is not, and it was a true galère to get there, according to one I travelled with. (One of our adventures dans la galère, I recounted here in Nouvelle France).
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Before I discovered the slam phenomenon, I went extra muros only twice, both with a friend visiting from Norway. Partly we wanted to have a look at the places where the youth were so angry, partly we went traditional sightseeing. In Saint Denis we dropped by at the famous basilica there where all the French kings have been crowned, and in Val-de-Marne we went to Mac/Val, a contemporary arts museum.

It seems quintessential of for this state, built on the ideal of Enlightenment to the people, to put such avant-garde institutions far into suburbia. It costs (practically) nothing to enter, which is probably a way of encouraging the locals to come to this place. I think they succeeded to some degree. While the exhibition was rather playful, the restaurant was minimalist, in terms both of its interior and the food. Someone told me that the highbrow restaurant was an attempt at encouraging Parisians to take the trip. However, the atmosphere (and prises?) didn’t encourage the locals I observed to feel at home there. (I remember this incident, but I can no loner remember what made me think certain visitors were locals belonging to certain social strata –at the time, I obviously didn’t follow my own note-taking advise and described instead of categorised….)

To get to this museum, one takes a metro line to its final destination (Choisy – Chinatown, in fact, which we discovered also made it a poor target for our angry youth expedition – perhaps the sino-français haven’t yet become second or third generation on the dole?), and then walk or take a bus even further into the (sub)urban sprawl.

The same travelling procedure, I’ve followed several times the last three weeks. First, I take the metro all the way to its terminus, then I go on by feet, bus or tramway – through names of places one remembers from the November ‘05 riots –, until I am at a Place de la Liberation or Place de la Résistance…(I’ll leave these interesting place names, full of national remembrance, for another post), where I find some more or less grandiose cultural centre where all kinds of experimental artistic activities take place. The slam poetry is not at all seen as an experimental activity, but rather to “invite the street in and listen to it”.

In one of these places, Le Blanc-Mesnil, the whole affair appeared slightly absurd to me: Outside the very grandiose Forum culturel there were groups of predominantly black youth dressed hip-hop style inside, well, the percentage of black hip-hop style was not very high.

The Norwegian arts scene is probably one of the least elitist in the world, while the French is probably quite high on the other end of the spectrum. So, while I find a bit bewildering the time and place to perform some rather experimental jazz jam or modern ballet or whatever, the French seem to react if it is completely normal.

Slameur and musicians in a forum culturel in the suburb

Following the Parisian slam scene immediately led me to the suburbs. During my 9 months long first stay here, I crossed la pheripherique (ring road) only five times (except to go…

Slameurs – and one slameuse – on the web

Published on February 6, 2007 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts...

Every night there are several soirées slams taking place. The scene has completely exploded since I started following it 8 months ago, and certainly since I had my first peek into it at a quite shabby bar in Rue de Bagnolet more than a year ago. The slam is still going on in shabby bars, but it’s also found its way big time onto the Internet.

Télérama, a French version of the British Time Out has put 6 nice videos on their site, here. I would particularly recommend Sandra and Le Slam (with the duo performing AC! En nos âmes et consciences which I wrote about here).

The bar Divan du Monde up in Montmartre (the cradle of Parisian slam) is having great slam soirées once a month hosted by Caroline Carl, and they put all the performances on internet: see here.

Last week-end there was some kind of hip-hop award going on, where slam was a category (which I’ve not heard anyone talk about). I’ll add the link here, because it includes one of my personal favourites Souleymane Diamanka. (The others are also worth checking out. Abd Al Malik represents a strange phenomenon, by the way. I think he’s great, but strangely the term slam were not connected to his name before it became an advertismenent asset…. Read an interview with him in Danish(!) here –thanks Monica, for the link :) ).

The reason why Souleymane is my favourite can be found on his site on myspace here: Le poète se cache… It’s sooo beautiful.

UPDATE ON SOULEYMANE DIAMANKA: All the lyrics from Souleymane Diamanka’s forthcoming album L’Hiver Peul (out the 10th of April), can be found here, together with an extensive biography, touring dates, extracts of the songs etc. The biography contains some information of the oratory arts amongst the people Peul in Senegal transmitted to the French suburbs obviously representing such a goldmine for an anthropologist that it’ll surely result in a new post soon. (It also appears that Souleymane participated in the inauguration of the controversial (ethnographic) arts museum Quai Branly (site in English!)…).

The 10th of April is also the release date for the anthology of poems written together with John Bansaï, J’écris en français dans une langue étrangère (“I write in French in a foreign language”).

Every night there are several soirées slams taking place. The scene has completely exploded since I started following it 8 months ago, and certainly since I had my first peek into it at a quite shabby bar in Rue de…

Slam at Louvre (me in Oslo)

Published on November 19, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts..., Places

As some might have discovered, I’m not exactly flooding this site with new texts at the moment. That’s because I’m busy writing some other stuff (in fact nothing less than starting on la grande oevure which will be my thesis in due time…), before I’m off for Paris again in a few weeks. Right now, sitting in my green coach, googling for some information for a text I must hand in over the weekend, I wish I were already there. Not because writing this text is so terrible, not at all, but because Toni Morrison has been at Louvre, and last Friday she invited along a number of slam poetry artists to slam about classical French paintings and about being étranger chez soi (translated “a foreigner’s home”).

The free newspaper 20 minutes has published a quite nice photo series of the event.

I found the series here (while searching for Café Culturel in Saint Denis for my text in fact). (Excellent site for finding info on the French slam scene by the way, but I’ve got to get back to my text to be handed in soon, no more getting lost at the web for me…).

Well, just one more remark: The French urban art forms seem finally to get a little bit of highbrow acknowledgement. The day I left Paris, at the 13th of October, Le Grand Palais (Eng.) invited in the street, and dedicated a whole weekend to rappers, skaters, graffiti artists, and yes, slammers: La rue au Grand Palais. – A lot to be said about this, of course, but not now.

UPDATE:

I just found out that Mary Stevens has written an interesting post on another event during Toni Morrison’s residency at Louvre in her excellent research blog. Amongst other things, I learnt that it’s not the English title “A Foreigner’s Home” that is a strange translation of the French, it’s the other way around:

From the start, the title chosen by Morrison for her residency caused much debate. In English the title is ‘The Foreigner’s Home’; this has been incompletely rendered in French as the much more limited ‘Etranger chez soi’. The use of the apostrophe makes the English much more interesting: it implies both possession and a temporal relation (’the foreigner has come home’ – and hence is perhaps both foreign and no-longer foreign at the same time). It could also perhaps be read as a comment on the nature of museums, particularly in the post-colonial context. In addition, the English seems to me to place the emphasis on the concept of home, whereas the French stresses the ‘etranger’.

More poetry

Published on October 11, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Music, literature, arts..., Places

Today I’ve had a quick look at two extremes of the French slam phenomenon. First, I went to an atelier slam in a local activity centre ( Centre d’animation) close to where I lived until August. For two hours every Tuesday, MC Tsunami, the orchestrator of various slam soirées and host of the website planteteslam.com, leads a workshop for youth in Eastern Paris. (However, as he told me, and as I could observe myself, most of those coming have strictly speaking passed the age of youth).
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The workshop so rewarding for a novice to poetry that the anthropologist felt a bit torn between participation and observation, but concluded that she wasn’t completely up for playing with la langue de Molière et al. yet. However, I did learn some important features of poetry concerning alliterations (repetition of particular syllables or consonants – a frequent means in French poetry as the articulation is based a lot more on syllables than e.g. English and Norwegain…) and phases (particular phrases or segments of phrases). (Right now I listen to Grand Corps Malade’s at-least-300000-copies-selling album Midi 20, where I just heard him describe himself as just “amongst loads of others, a simple seeker of phases”). I’ll return to syllables, alliterations, phases and the rest of the poetic universe when I get more into it…

Amongst other subjects they discussed and practiced, there was of course also a discussion on slam is and is not (it’s to share and to appear in front of others… – interestingly, the battle aspect which defines slam poetry in the USA, where also the word originates from, has much less importance here in France).

Then over to the other extreme end of the slam phenomenon (which indeed has taken off during the two months I’ve been away): After the atelier at the community centre, I hurried up Boulevard Voltaire (still 11th Arrondissement) to the concert venue Le Bataclan to try to get a ticket to Grand Corps Malade’s show (not slam, since a show doesn’t imply exchange…, as they all say, including GCM himself). Even though Le Bataclan houses a few thousand, and GCM is on stage for 9 evenings between 3rd and 14th October, I could not get a ticket, not even on the street, which has worked well before. The queue for entering was winding far down the pavement and it comprised men in suit and tie (perhaps they hadn’t had time to change after work?) and women in party dresses and hair full of hairspray, to grandparents and children going with their family. With the price ranging from 29 to 39€, it wasn’t surprising that the audience looked a bit different from the slam soirées I’ve been hanging around at. And it looked even more different from the extremely varied audience at the monthly sessions GCM himself hosts at a local cultural centre – centre culturel – in his native banlieue Saint Denis. (For those interested, GCM can be seen in the background to the right on this photo).

As it was sold out today, I’ll not have the chance to see GCM when I’m here this time. Tomorrow, I’ll be at La Guinguette Pirate for another round in the qualification for the slam championship taking place in December. (On Saturday, I was at the qualification round at La Milonga, in the banlieue Fontenay-sous-Bois (94)). On Thursday, I can choose between the weekly slam soirée at Café de Paris (not sufficiently à la mode for having their own website…) and a live show (thus not slam! ☺ ) called “The slam was better before”, apparently with some of the old guys in the game, just around the corner from metro Belleville. (Anyway, I’ve already missed out on a couple of the slam related events popping up all over eastern Paris at the moment: …I was thinking of making a list, but as I quickly looked through all the flyers I’ve got hold of, I realise that I don’t bother…).

Today I’ve had a quick look at two extremes of the French slam phenomenon. First, I went to an atelier slam in a local activity centre ( Centre d’animation) close to where I lived until August. For two hours every…