Doctor Mac

This is number 4 in the music break series, Paris is a Continent.

A still from the music video for Mac Tyer's "Docteur So."

It’s the return of one of the best R&B artists in French. K-Reen is back with a new track called “Comme avant” (Like Before) featuring rapper Youssoupha.  She’s a veteran of French R&B and rap, having been featured on one of the first compilations of local R&B in the mid-1990s and collaborating with legends like MC Solaar. Youssoupha, whose father is a legendary Congolese rumba musician, Tabu Ley Rochereau, needs no introduction. K-Reen was born in French Guiana.  Their collaboration is another example of how Paris is a place where the black (and Arab) diasporas meet and colleraborate. K-Reen’s album should be out in March 2012.

We’ve featured Nessbeal in this series already. This time, a song from his new album, the song “La Nébuleuse des Aigles” featuring his discovery Isleym (remember her). Nessbeal (government name: Nabil Sahli) and Isleym are both of Moroccan descent.

Somebody new in this column: Mac Tyer.  The video for the track “Docteur So.”  Like most of the musicians in this post and this series, he is from the suburbs of Paris. In his case, Aubervilliers, in the northeastern part of the city. His family migrated to France from its former colony, Cameroon.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.