Experience MML

Got word last week that in April, I’ll be speaking at the 2008 Pop Conference at the Experience Music Project museum out in Seattle. The conference is an annual mashup of academic and non-academic panel sessions and presentations, all variations on a theme, which for this year is “Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change.” My 50 minutes of fame is “Hiphop As Resistance in French Society,” an exploration of what happened right after the Paris riots of 2005, when the French government tried to legally censor hiphop. (Warning: PowerPoint may be involved.) Here’s the brief proposal that got me over; the Pop Conference is April 10-13.

Rapper Monsieur R’s incendiary 2004 single “FranSSe” stirred a maelstrom of controversy in the French government over a year after its release, following 20 days of rioting in outlying Parisian suburbs during November 2005. The title of “FranSSe” recalls some MCs’ intentional misspelling of AmeriKKKa in the United States (“SS” recalling the Schutzstaffel security of Adolf Hitler), and 29-year-old Congolese rapper Monsieur R made plain his disdain for his adopted country: “France is a bitch, don’t forget to fuck her to exhaustion/You have to treat her like a whore, man… France is a lousy mother who abandoned her sons on the sidewalk/My Muslim brothers are hated like my Jewish brothers were during the Reich.”

After the suburban uprising, over 200 French politicians drafted a petition against hiphop, arguing that MCs helped provoke the rioting with songs speaking of police harassment and discrimination against Arab and African immigrants. The rioting stemmed from the accidental death of two teenagers (of Tunisian and Malian origin) chased down by police in a run-down Parisian suburb on October 27, 2005. By November 25, seven rap groups were targeted by ruling UMP political party politician François Grosdidier for hateful and racist lyrics. This vilification was ultimately unsuccessful, and a benefit rap album for the teens (entitled Pour Rien or For Nothing) ironically resulted.

My presentation examines the confrontation between hiphop and government in France, how politicians attempted to quash this music of resistance, and the role of hiphop in the French uprising of 2005 through extensive interviews and audio recordings.