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At the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Arts et Métiers) in Paris, the “Sweet France” exhibition is woven around the figure of Rachid Taha, the first Algerian artist to link the rhythms of oriental music with those of rock and punk. It is a Franco-Algerian journey that allows the public to trace the thread of the political and social history of France from the 1960s to the 2000s. A history of interculturality, diversity, anti-racist struggles and music.
Until May 8, 2022, the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Paris will host “Sweet France. From the music of exile to urban cultures ”, an exhibition that traces the evolution of Franco-Maghreb music from the 1960s to 2000, through the figure of the singer Rachid Taha, who died in 2018.
With different recreational activities, such as a “bleeding karaoke” or the game of “who is this person?”, The chrono-thematic route of the exhibition in Paris takes visitors through the history of North African immigration to France.
It is a political stance taken by Naïma Huber Yahi, curator of the exhibition, and historian Myriam Chopin. “Through Rachid Taha and the music of immigrants we want to reaffirm and celebrate the interculturality caused by immigration. These songs belong to the French heritage and those who know them belong to the national community and to the collective memory, ”Yahi told France 24.
Rachid Taha, the Algerian avant-garde
Starting from the aftermath of the Algerian war, the exhibition allows visitors to discover the great Maghrebi singers who marked history in the Paris of the 1960s. Among them, Abderrahmane Amrani, alias Dahmane El Harrachi, born in 1921 in El Biar, near Algiers, from whom Rachid Taha borrowed his popular song “Ya Rayah” in 1993.
“It is through Rachid Taha and his album ‘Diwân’ that we will rediscover all the heritage left by the great North African singers of the 1960s,” said the curator. “What is essential in this artist, and that is why we have chosen him to become the common thread of our exhibition, is that he makes the link between yesterday and today. Throughout his work, he oscillates between heritage, rock and electro, between tradition and avant-garde. He is someone who today has inspired many French artists ”.
The scenography of the exhibition introduces the visitor to the places of memory of the exile of the Maghreb in Paris and immerses him in the intimacy of the immigrants of the time. Between vintage mopeds and old Peugeot cars, we visited the “Scopitone cafes” where the workers, leaving the factory, relaxed listening to records of Algerian stars.
“Sweet France” with oriental rhythms
The exhibition also questions the difficulties of these populations in the face of exile, poverty and racism. On the screen of a television of the time, Rachid Taha recounts his departure from Algeria and his arrival in Alsace, in France, and his questions as an immigrant teenager. “It is a country that has invaded us, that has expelled us, and now we are home. What are we doing here? ”He laughs.
The slogans and posters of the “March of the Arabs” are distributed on the walls and the floor. “Listen to me comrade” plays in one of the rooms, a song that Taha borrowed from the musical legend in exile, Mohamed Mazouni.
But Rachid Taha is not limited to versions of North African singers. Adding oriental rhythms to “Sweet France” (Douce France) in 1986, he made his famous song by Charles Trenet, written in 1943 to support young French sent to Germany during World War II.
His musical group, named “Carte de séjour”, was made up of Djamel Dif, Jérôme Savy, Mokhtar and Mohamed Amini. Together with them, Taha quickly animated the music scene in the French suburbs, stirred by the first anti-racist marches of the 1980s and in full artistic effervescence.
France “black, white, Arab”
Theater, comics, visual arts and, of course, music. The children of immigration used different means to claim their “mestizo culture”.
On his own, Rachid Taha became an internationally known artist, shining far beyond the popular neighborhoods and the “Rock Against Police” concerts that enshrined him in the early 1980s.
The “Sweet France” exhibition stops in the 2000s, just before the explosion of the myth of France as “black, white, Arab”. The visitor thus leaves the exhibition under the gaze of the great thinkers of interculturality, from Léopold Sédar Senghor to Maryse Condé.
Article translated from the original in French
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