AfricaIs aCountry

Shoutout Banlieue

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Shoutout Banlieue

By
Hinda Talhaoui

Number 8 in our series, Paris Is a Continent, showcasing the music of the French capital, is about bragging rights and one song.

A screenshot from the music video from Claise's "Vive le Banlieue."

Loads of Paris suburbs or departements get shouted out in this song by a cast of the city’s rappers: 75 (Paris), 77 (Seine Et Marne), 78 (Les Yveline), 91 (Essonne; my suburb), 92 (Hauts de Seine), 93 (Seine Saint Denis), 94 (Val de Marne) and 95 (Val d’Oise). This a break from the usual enmity between suburbs (often manufactured to aid record sales), like the long-standing “beef” between Rohff (from the 94th) and Booba (the 92nd).

Watch.

Editor: For those interesting in the history, politics and culture of the banlieues or suburbs, we can recommend the following in English: “Banlieue” by Ernesto Castaneda; “Uprisings in the Banlieue,” by Etienne Balibar; “Police Power and Race Riots in Paris;” “French working-class banlieues and black American ghetto: from conflation to comparison;” “Grassroots Political Militants: Banlieusards and Politics, Mute Magazine” by Emilio Qiadrelli;  the films: La Haine, Ma 6-T va crack-er, Games of Love and Chance, Neuilly Yo Mama; “Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and Franco-Maghrebi Identities;” and “The Paris Banlieue: Peripheries of Inequality.”

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.