Copyright (c) 2012 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet Recent documents in Olivier Bourderionnet en-us Mon, 26 Nov 2012 03:59:58 PST 3600 http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/3 http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/3 Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:17:03 PDT Olivier Bourderionnet http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/2 http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/2 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:03:04 PDT This paper examines the work and situations of two francophone singer-songwriters from Africa, Tiken Jah Fakoly and Corneille, through the notion of displacement. I attempt to answer important questions regarding language, identity, and the social role of the African pop artist in France and the francophone world. Tiken Jah Fakoly and Corneille embody the mediation between publics from two continents and the global music industry in a particular geopolitical context. They also belong to a generation of artists whose productions signal a shift in French popular music representations of Africa and Africans. Discussing these artists’ choice to sing in French will also allow us to reflect on the position of the French language African artist in the English-dominated world of pop music.

]]> Olivier Bourderionnet http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/1 http://works.bepress.com/olivier_bourderionnet/1 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:03:03 PDT This paper concentrates on the media representation of the young rapper Abd Al Malik, whose recent albums Gibraltar (2006) and Dante (2008) have been largely embraced by the Parisian elite. Along with the cultural legitimation that affords Malik’s articulate rap discourse access to a mainstream audience, questions regarding cooptation, authenticity and identity politics reveal strong divides in the French public sphere, as well as the general sense of a preordained space assigned to rap artists in the media. Malik’s artistic vision, successfully blending rap and the most aristocratic of chanson, while asserting a strong multicultural identity, comes across as gently subversive and echoes France’s struggle to reconcile its attachment to tradition and its need to adapt to a changing society.

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