The people live as if they are in another country; they having nothing to do with the dirty war imposed on the people living in the northern part of the country. The explanation closest to the truth is that the south lives its identity with all its extensions, while the residents of the 85967orth are engulfed in dirty wars created by the identity merchants.
In the second quote Yacine also displays his understanding of the disconnect between southern and northern Algeria, indicating his desire to reconcile this divide in the context of the interview through his music.
There is a common feeling of new opportunity and post-colonial enmity among some Africans who find themselves in their European colonial homelands Mark It is a mixed feeling that, at best, can create ambiguous realities. Africans in Europe can receive a wide variety of stigmata and prejudice based on many stereotypes, cultural, religious, sexual, racial, and perhaps most importantly for immigrants, they encounter significant class-based bigotry Sayad Some cannot afford to return home and find themselves working in conditions that undermine their self-worth, their talents, and their qualifications Thomas — Many immigrants are pressured to funnel money home, while lying to their families about what they are doing in the industrialized world, how happy they are and where their money is coming from.
Muslim immigrants in particular face discrimination widely within Europe, and North Africans find themselves frustrated and feared Beriss Within an Algerian context, Gnawa Diffusion may have oriented itself towards internal struggles between Black, Imazighen, and Arabs, but within France, Gnawa Diffusion understood themselves as a band of immigrant Africans with Islamic cultural influences fighting against discrimination.
The band signified its intended audience by using not only instruments and musics, but by mixing Tamazigh, Arabic, English, and French. I cannot confirm the degree to which the band members experienced racism, but their music spoke to such experiences.
During the post World War II economic boom and before the s oil crisis in France, many Algerians were encouraged to immigrate to France as laborers and establish firm roots Silverstein 23— Yacine came to feel his life story as an Algerian in France was analogous to Gnawa slaves, plucked from their ancestral homes, because his residence in France became necessary as he was unable to return to Algeria for almost ten years for fear of military conscription.
Packed in with immigrants from ex-colonies around the world and poor French people, Yacine formed his own Algeria in exile while watching his real homeland tear itself apart between various Islamic and Imazighen fundamentalist, nationalist, moderate, and separatist movements.
In these experiences, Yacine saw himself as entirely African, not only a light-skinned Algerian Smati French colonization generally repressed Algerian culture as a whole, undermining functioning legal, economic, and educational system.
In the National Liberation Front in Algeria brought together Algerian interest groups to launch a guerilla war of independence that was construed as a terrorist movement by colonial France. Sensing this history of invasion, torture, and war crimes repeating itself in recent times in the Middle East, Gnawa Diffusion featured U. Bush Gnawa Diffusion After independence, his work turned to colonial legacy and the internal oppression of Imazighen in Algeria Corcoran 48— It is difficult to underestimate the kind of radical impact Kateb must have had on Amazigh.
Black Africans are still profoundly suspicious of Arabs Yacine: I think that the only way out of this problem is to open our arms to others, to those who were dominated or humiliated by our ancestors. We need to offer an outstretched hand, an open heart and above all a lot of humility. We need to make them realize that they too have strongly marked our culture.
What can be a greater homage than to see a White person playing the guembri, which is the emblematic musical instrument of the Black man he despised and martyrized yesterday! This kind of homage does not resolve much, of course. It is also, above all, necessary that the descendants of the slave traders that we are have the courage and the strength to recognize that hurtful past.
This self-criticism has unfortunately not yet started. The band identified with Jamaican Rastafari musical aesthetics and with aspects of Rastafari messages of liberation and struggle. They subscribed to and promoted the use of marijuana. The Gnawa are also known for their use of marijuana in ceremonies, practice, and daily life Waugh , though ceremonial participants appear to generally refrain Kapchan — Similarly, Rastafari and Gnawa both engage aspects of control, possession, and agency in lived histories of slavery by performing resistance music.
From this perspective, Africa is redefined according to norms that refute its traditional definition. For instance, North Africans are traditionally considered to be closer to the Middle East than the rest of the African continent, but in the French context, many rappers have shaped connections that go beyond these classifications. Thus, although Maghrebians are generally not regarded as and do not consider themselves as Black, they can be included in a common African identity which does not necessarily have to do with the color of skin.
Helenon Gnawa Diffusion is a group of Maghrebis. They distinguish themselves from Eastern Arabs and yet also acknowledge their Arab heritage:. Chehat: The Maghreb is physically part of Africa but in reality seems to turn its back on the rest of the continent. Interest in the continent is limited. Africa is absent in both the media and culturally speaking.
What do you think can change this situation? The Arabo-Islamic Maghrebi identity promoted by the politicians is little more than an exterior identity in reality.
Furthermore, this veneer which the hardliners would like to see imposed in our countrie, is not necessarily condoned nor conceded by the Middle Easterners themselves.
I should know, as part of my family lives in Syria and in the Lebanon. The Maghreb is not at all geographically linked to the Arab peninsula. Africa is back on the agenda. There are signs of its comeback everywhere, both in the Anglo-Saxon and Latin countries. Chehat: Do you think that the Maghrebi populations will become progressively absorbed into the Middle Eastern sphere culturally speaking, as a result of the Arabization policies imposed with more or less vigor by the public authorities?
The public powers can install an institutional, State, official culture. It will struggle alongside the popular cultures that are really rooted in society but will never be able to erase or replace them.
Identity cannot be determined by decree. It comes from the very soul of the population, and the soul of the Maghreb is African.
Yacine: It was a way of setting the records straight and of saying no to the occultation of a vast part of Algeria. Of course the majority of the population lives in the North, but a significant part of this very majority left the South to survive, work, seek comfort and well-being.
What is more, Gnawa songs and music are similar to the songs and music of the Black Americans: they are songs of suffering, religious protest songs, mystical songs And that takes us to the very heart of Africa! Thus, as Helenon suggests, these Algerians reaffirmed their African identity through Black musics. What are these philosophical and musical connections to Black Americans? Recently inside France, issues of marginalization, poverty, lack of employment, education, and opportunity led to annual riots by populations of first, second, and third generation Africans and North Africans.
The most spectacular, frustrated, and tragic riot that brought global attention to French equity and immigration issues was in Osumare Over the course of three months, 2, people were arrested from towns that were well dispersed across the nation Snow, Vliegenthart, and Corrigall-Brown With foreseeable irony, President Chirac enacted a state of emergency rule of law that was previously used by the French in the Algerian War of Independence Osumare In the last two decades, French hip-hop artists were accused of inciting and fueling these riots.
France is considered the largest producer and consumer of hip hop outside of the U. Rap is globally known for finding a common thread through culture, class, historical oppression, and youth rebellion ibid.
In fact, after the riots, two hundred French members of parliament petitioned for legal action against several French rappers Poggioli French rap is full of its own traditions of word play. However, in the s priorities changed, and authorities perceived the way in which the French language was mixed with English and Arabic in the banlieues as a threat, contributing to the creation of the Toubon Law of which mandated the legal preservation of the French language , and aided the successful prosecution of many rap artists ibid.
At this time, Algeria was just beginning to recover from ten years of bitter civil war which had spilled over into France on several occasions Silverstein — Below, Osumare delicately explains why hip hop is so meaningful to bands like Gnawa Diffusion who seek to improve the position of Africa in the world:.
Wherever the Africanist aesthetic has migrated, it has been relegated to a vernacular, low art status, even as its principles have increasingly become the basis of global popular culture. This ranking in relation to European classicism has given it a culturally marginal status that in some ways hip-hop is correcting, and in other ways it is providing fodder to the historic cultural hierarchy.
Herein lies the complexity of hip-hop at this current juncture in the history of the Africanist aesthetic. Gnawa Diffusion was based in Grenoble in the Southeast of France. Yacine and most of the members of Gnawa Diffusion are directly from Algeria or are second or third generation French Algerians Gnawa Diffusion However, they saw these struggles for authenticity as a part of a much larger system of oppression enacted by people of European ancestry, and their music performed this through another reflection of the African Diaspora, the diffusion of hip hop.
The fact is that performing outside the confines of the [Gnawa] order is a very recent trend; the context has traditionally been an essential element in performance. Those who are masters within their own context perform where they carry out a familiar and well-patterned function. Music of that function cannot be transported to another environment; the memory of its past greatness dictates that because one needs the memory to activate the spiritual realities.
Memory is thus the basis of this religious encounter. Gnawa Diffusion as a group is not confused about its representation of Gnawa people, or the Sidi Bilal, but its audiences may have been, and may be. I wrongly assumed for years Gnawa were people from Algeria, and of course, they are, but we cannot guess which layers of meaning the band intended to appropriate when choosing their name, even if we assume the band embraces any or all of the various meanings of the term.
We must place some burden of misrepresentation and confusion upon Gnawa Diffusion themselves. Yacine sees the group as part of a larger diffusion of Africanness around the world Their songs call upon France to witness what has been done to Algeria, and for Algerians to remember whom to hold accountable.
The band has a profound sense of respect for the sacred. These musics are not associated with a Black identity. He defends this language against pressures to be either French or Arabic Saidani Authenticity is also based on a set of given subjective criteria, and I can see why others might reject my conclusions.
The band borrows musics from all around the world because they are surrounded by them. Their experience of these musics is embodied and lived Wahab 47 , not abstracted and mediated Taylor — One could argue that the band is simply from post-colonial France, where people have been appropriated from all over.
This too would be subjective. The band is clearly a master of its own context in this regard, and their fans authenticate their performance with their adoration and devotion. I argue that Gnawa Diffusion manifests the call of the Sidi Bilal for spiritual jihad. Traditional Gnawa music heals those who are possessed by jinn in a world full of pain.
Gnawa Diffusion promotes maintenance of self-worth and memories of origins and deep history for those far from home. They reference memories of peace and reconciliation directly through text and music Gnawa Diffusion ; , and offer narratives of liberation from bondage.
Gnawa Diffusion had the right to seek to heal themselves and the places they are from with their music by memorializing the struggles of people like themselves. Rather, it should be authenticated by the quality of its attempt to perform a reconciliation of the harmful cleavages that birthed Gnawa Diffusion.
Any shortcomings in this paper are entirely my own. On the day before this paper was first submitted, I discovered the band reunited for a twentieth-year reunion summer tour to promote a new album that has yet to be released.
Jean-Nicolas De Surmont dir. ISBN : Abstracts Abstract Gnawa Diffusion was a successful musical group of first- and second-generation North African immigrants that achieved significant fame in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe during the last two decades. Yacine Monday 2 August Tuesday 3 August Wednesday 4 August Thursday 5 August Friday 6 August Saturday 7 August Sunday 8 August Monday 9 August Tuesday 10 August Wednesday 11 August Thursday 12 August Friday 13 August Saturday 14 August Sunday 15 August Monday 16 August Tuesday 17 August Wednesday 18 August Thursday 19 August Friday 20 August Saturday 21 August Sunday 22 August Monday 23 August Tuesday 24 August Wednesday 25 August Thursday 26 August Friday 27 August Saturday 28 August Sunday 29 August Monday 30 August Tuesday 31 August Wednesday 1 September Thursday 2 September Friday 3 September Saturday 4 September Sunday 5 September Monday 6 September Tuesday 7 September Wednesday 8 September Thursday 9 September Friday 10 September Saturday 11 September Sunday 12 September Monday 13 September Tuesday 14 September Wednesday 15 September Thursday 16 September Friday 17 September Saturday 18 September Sunday 19 September Monday 20 September Tuesday 21 September Wednesday 22 September Thursday 23 September Friday 24 September Saturday 25 September Sunday 26 September Monday 27 September Tuesday 28 September Wednesday 29 September Thursday 30 September Friday 1 October Saturday 2 October Sunday 3 October Monday 4 October Tuesday 5 October Wednesday 6 October Thursday 7 October Friday 8 October Saturday 9 October Sunday 10 October Monday 11 October Tuesday 12 October Wednesday 13 October Thursday 14 October Friday 15 October Saturday 16 October Sunday 17 October Monday 18 October Tuesday 19 October Wednesday 20 October Thursday 21 October Friday 22 October Saturday 23 October Sunday 24 October Monday 25 October Tuesday 26 October Wednesday 27 October Thursday 28 October Friday 29 October Saturday 30 October Sunday 31 October Monday 1 November Tuesday 2 November Wednesday 3 November Thursday 4 November Friday 5 November Saturday 6 November Sunday 7 November Monday 8 November Tuesday 9 November Wednesday 10 November Thursday 11 November Friday 12 November Saturday 13 November Sunday 14 November Monday 15 November Tuesday 16 November Wednesday 17 November Thursday 18 November
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