Melissa on the road

Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films. As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper... Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa... This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.

02/12/2016

Documentary "Where Do You Draw The Line?" online this Friday

Where Do You Draw The Line?

An amazing documentary on the risks that is facing the Ecuadorian forest is launched online this Friday.

Written and produced by young enthusiastic first-time filmmakers from Bristol, known as WordSmith Production, the film is a courageous exploration of the situation of a very wild and well-preserved region of South America, having to deal with the cruel rules of oil exploitation.

I've met with one of the filmmakers when in Bristol and the least I can say is that this team is committed and talented. They release this film for free and use the means of films for a great cause, it's a necessity to watch this film! Especially in this context.

Watch the trailer:

More details on the film:

AMAZONIAN COMMUNITY UNITED AGAINST OIL FACES MASSIVE ATTACK

Narration by Daddy G of Massive Attack, including his own music composed exclusively for the film.

This documentary was filmed in Sani Isla and Ecuador’s capital city, Quito. It gives voice to an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. To break the bond with the forest that has sustained their people for generations would be the death of their culture and community. Their resolve is tested in the face of corruption, bribery and greed as well as oil companies and the military threatening to take over the land by force.

At first glance it might appear that the community is just another victim of big oil’s need to feed ‘our’ collective habit. But a more complex story emerges: China taking over the role of the IMF and World Bank funding overseas development in return for oil; well-meaning but under resourced and ultimately failing, local government and worldwide initiatives; the international community turning a blind eye; blatant denial of indigenous rights; as well

as the desires of the community themselves, to develop in line with modern expectations.

Biologists classify this region as one of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet. To extract oil in what we all know as ‘the lungs of the earth’ for 8 days worth of oil (at current rates of world consumption) would bring this particular ecosystem to the brink of collapse. In a globalised world of mass consumption run on fossil fuels, could we all play in a part in the destruction of this pristine rainforest? If so, 'Where do you draw the line?'

The film features:

- Academics who explain the government’s push for oil in order to fund development;

- Leading researchers who demonstrate the unique species and rich biodiversity existing within the region;

- Community members explaining their long history in the area, and their plans for a sustainable future based on eco-tourism for future generations, as well as the lengths they will go to in order to protect their community;

- A government minister who was part of a now cancelled initiative which could have saved the region entirely.

- Covertly captured footage of an oil production platform guarded by the military (many camera crews have tried and failed to gain access)

- Footage of an oil slick which flowed down through Ecuador into Peru and The Amazon itself.

Production notes:

Produced by three recent uni-graduate friends, all 3 from Bristol and who went off to Ecuador on a self-funded whim having saved up for a year after reading a newspaper article in The Guardian.

They had no experience of film making and learned everything along the way.

Looking through the footage it became clear that they had captured a snapshot of a global issue with lasting implications for us all.

Friends of Daddy G suggested he might be interested in helping raise awareness.

Recognising the importance of the subject matter, he recorded his voiceover in between tours having become committed to the project.

Released with the intention of raising awareness and educating, this film is not expected to generate any profit.

--

Released for free online at http://www.vimeo.com/wdydtl on Friday the 2nd Dec 2016, from midnight.
Link: https://vimeo.com/193289299

01/12/2016

"Just follow me"...

'Working Class Hero' - John Lennon

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and class less and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

Music
- "Working Class Hero (2010 - Remaster)" by John Lennon

'Europe Is Lost'

Kate Tempest - 'Europe Is Lost'

Europe is lost, America lost, London is lost,
Still we are clamouring victory.
All that is meaningless rules,
And we have learned nothing from history.

People are dead in their lifetimes,
Dazed in the shine of the streets.
But look how the traffic keeps moving.
The system’s too slick to stop working.
Business is good. And there’s bands every night in the pubs,
And there’s two for one drinks in the clubs.

We scrubbed up well
We washed off the work and the stress
Now all we want’s some excess
Better yet; A night to remember that we’ll soon forget.

All of the blood that was shed for these cities to grow,
All of the bodies that fell.
The roots that were dug from the ground
So these games could be played
I see it tonight in the stains on my hands.

The buildings are screaming
I cant ask for help though, nobody knows me,
Hostile and worried and lonely.
We move in our packs and these are the rites we were born to
Working and working so we can be all that we want
Then dancing the drudgery off
But even the drugs have got boring.
Well, sex is still good when you get it.

To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach
To each a dream,
Don’t weep, don’t scream,
Just keep it in,
Keep sleeping in
What am I gonna do to wake up?

I feel the cost of it pushing my body
Like I push my hands into pockets
And softly I walk and I see it, it’s all we deserve
The wrongs of our past have resurfaced
Despite all we did to vanquish the traces
My very language is tainted
With all that we stole to replace it with this,
I am quiet,
Feeling the onset of riot.
But riots are tiny though,
Systems are huge,
The traffic keeps moving, proving there’s nothing to do.

It’s big business baby and its smile is hideous.
Top down violence, structural viciousness.
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives.
But don’t worry bout that. Worry bout terrorists.

The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the polarbears, the elephants are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying.
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport.

Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them.
Live porn streamed to your pre-teens bedrooms.
Glass ceiling, no headroom. Half a generation live beneath the breadline.

Oh but it's happy hour on the high street,
Friday night at last lads, my treat!
All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar,
Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou,
It was madness, the road ran red, pure claret.
And about them immigrants? I cant stand them.
Mostly, I mind my own business.
But they’re only coming over here to get rich.
It’s a sickness.
England! England!
Patriotism!

And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?

Work all your life for a pittance,
Maybe you’ll make it to manager,
Pray for a raise
Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar.

Anarchists desperate for something to smash
Scandalous pictures of glamorous rappers in fashionable magazines
Who’s dating who?
Politico cash in an envelope
Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits,
And it's back to the house of lords with slapped wrists
They abduct kids and fuck the heads of dead pigs
But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs –
Jail him, he’s the criminal

It's the BoredOfItAll generation
The product of product placement and manipulation,
Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care,
Come on, new shoes.
Beautiful hair.

Bullshit saccharine ballads
And selfies
And selfies

And selfies
And here’s me outside the palace of ME!

Construct a self and psyhcosis
And meanwhile the people are dead in their droves
But nobody noticed,
Well actually, some of them noticed,
You could tell by the emoji they posted.

Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes
The lights are so nice and bright and lets dream
But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream
What am I gonna do wake up?

We are lost
We are lost
We are lost
And still nothing
Will stop
Nothing pauses

We have ambitions and friends and our courtships to think of
Divorces to drink off the thought of

The money
The money
The oil

The planet is shaking and spoiled
Life is a plaything
A garment to soil
The toil the toil.
I cant see an ending at all.
Only the end.

How is this something to cherish?
When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts
To make room for alien structures,
Develop
Develop

Kill what you find if it threatens you.

No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck,

Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck.

30/11/2016

Banksy News

Banksy’s coming to South Bank...

in the form of Lazarides new Gallery!

Tuesday 29th of November 2016

Lazarides is about to add to your South Bank experience by opening a new gallery dedicated to Banksy prints! The gallery will be called "Banksy Print Gallery" and will be primarily selling secondary market Banksy Prints.

So, let's time-warp back and recap on the connection Lazarides gallery has with Banksy. It all started in the early 1990's, Steve Lazarides was working at a photoshoot for Sleaze Nation magazine and he met Banksy. Steve went on to work with Banksy for a number of years and this helped create the buzz and controversy around "street art" that we know today.

Over the years Banksy art has become more and more popular, with several artists trying to copy his work and murals being located all over the globe. The "Banksy Print Gallery" will simply be celebrating his work and offering the public the chance to buy his prints. All of this, just in time for Christmas.

In the words of Steve Lazarides, "This gallery will sell secondary market Banksy prints and will also have a collection of my photographs from our time together, as well as displaying ephemera from the period."

The gallery itself opens to the public Friday 2nd (December 2016).

Address: 22 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PD
(The gallery is based in the Mondrian London hotel)

Opening Times: Tuesday–Saturday 11am–7pm
Admission is free

29/11/2016

More Irish poetry: Doireann Ní Ghríofa

While Bleeding

In Memory of
Major Robert Gregory

I Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

II Always we'd have the new friend meet the old
And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,
And there is salt to lengthen out the smart
In the affections of our heart,
And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
But not a friend that I would bring
This night can set us quarrelling,
For all that come into my mind are dead.

III Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning better than mankind,
Though courteous to the worst; much falling he
Brooded upon sanctity
Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed
A long blast upon the horn that brought
A little nearer to his thought
A measureless consummation that he dreamed.

IV And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place,
Towards nightfall upon a race
Passionate and simple like his heart.

V And then I think of old George Pollexfen,
In muscular youth well known to Mayo men
For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses,
That could have shown how pure-bred horses
And solid men, for all their passion, live
But as the outrageous stars incline
By opposition, square and trine;
Having grown sluggish and contemplative.

VI They were my close companions many a year,
A portion of my mind and life, as it were,
And now their breathless faces seem to look
Out of some old picture-book;
I am accustomed to their lack of breath,
But not that my dear friend's dear son,
Our Sidney and our perfect man,
Could share in that discourtesy of death.

VIl For all things the delighted eye now sees
Were loved by him; the old storm-broken trees
That cast their shadows upon road and bridge;
The tower set on the stream's edge;
The ford where drinking cattle make a stir
Nightly, and startled by that sound
The water-hen must change her ground;
He might have been your heartiest welcomer.

VIII When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride
From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side
Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;
At Mooneen he had leaped a place
So perilous that half the astonished meet
Had shut their eyes; and where was it
He rode a race without a bit?
And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.

lX We dreamed that a great painter had been born
To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,
To that stern colour and that delicate line
That are our secret discipline
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And yet he had the intensity
To have published all to be a world's delight.

X What other could so well have counselled us
In all lovely intricacies of a house
As he that practised or that understood
All work in metal or in wood,
In moulded plaster or in carven stone?
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And all he did done perfectly
As though he had but that one trade alone.

XI Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
As 'twere all life's epitome.
What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?

XII I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind go
All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.

from THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE (1919)
by W illiam Butler Yeats

--

In February 1918, Robert Gregory, a major in the British air force, died while fighting in battle over Italy. In the eyes of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Robert Gregory was a fine, young, Renaissance man, whom he described as a “soldier, scholar, horseman.” To help his dear friend Lady Gregory cope with the loss of her son and to ease his own pain, Yeats writes the poem, “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory.” Many scholars suggest that this poem is the finest elegy in the English language since Lycidas. In the poem, Yeats compares Robert Gregory to three deceased friends, each of whom exhibits a characteristic that Robert Gregory embodies. In writing this poem, Yeats’s attempt at catharsis fails, as he realizes that his emotions in response to the death are beyond words. A mere poem cannot fully express his grief or commemorate a man’s life. Although he has learned to appreciate the value of human life, Yeats must come to terms with the loss of his friend before he can come of age.

By writing this elegy, W.B. Yeats glorifies Major Robert Gregory and seeks to provide comfort for Lady Gregory and himself. Losing a friend is tough, and the reader can relate with Yeats's dilemma. Throughout his life, Yeats has used his poetry as a means for solving his problems. A coming-of-age process involves a person learning about himself, and therefore, during the Middle Yeats period, he usually comes-of-age after writing a poem. However, this poem is an exception because it is one of four poems dedicated to Robert Gregory--it takes four full poems for Yeats to accept Gregory's death. "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory" was not written for only one man but for an entire generation of youth who died in the horrors of war. Major Robert Gregory symbolizes all the promising youth who fell to an early death. In memorializing Robert Gregory, Yeats remembers three of his dear friends who also died young. Each of these men had a third of what Yeats considers to be perfection, and Robert Gregory was the synthesis of these traits. Robert Gregory was in harmony with mind, spirit, and body, as a "soldier, scholar, horseman." He excelled at every task he set to do, and that is why Yeats labels him as "life's epitome." Yeats's healing process is a microcosm of Europe's reconstruction following the first world war. Deep wounds with "salt to lengthen out the smart" take a lifetime to overcome, and neither Yeats nor Europe has shown any sign of coming of age. Yeats ends his poem in speechless frustration. Europe has a second world war just twenty years later. The poem provokes the reader to re-evaluate his own experiences with death. If writing to achieve catharsis works for Yeats, then it might for the reader. Following the death of a loved one, the reader must not keep his emotions bottled inside. Accordingly, Yeats avoids the dangers of not facing the reality of death, and, at the same time, teaches the reader a lesson by venting his emotions through poetry.

27/11/2016

The sound of Blade Runner...

For the love of music :

Vangelis' Blade Runner performed by Heritage Orchestra

at Massive Attack's Meltdown Festival, in 2008

- extracts:

'Rachel's Song' - Blade Runner

Visionary film... There we are. Destroying our planet, our own creations, and therefore denying our own humanity.  

Live sets from 1996 / 2016

Yesterday, at the Walrus record shop, Paris 10 art, we were talking about the evolution of Massive Attack's sound, with the inspired talk show host, Frederique Labussiere, from French radio FIP, the Nordest bookstore's owner, Patrick, and a couple of dozens fans and readers of my book.

To display a representation of the band's stage evolution, which represent a lot for them who have always been willing to deliver a message through visuals and performances, here are a few clips, one from the very creative area of the mid 1990s, comprising two songs - and three other live extracts from this year, 20 years later.

Enjoy.

Massive Attack - Live From "The White Room"-

Channel 4 - 2nd March 1996

"The White Room" was a Channel 4 music show that aired during the 1990's, and hosted by Mark Radcliffe.
This is Massive Attack's two song performance from the show that aired on the 2nd March 1996.

Tracklist:
01. Karmacoma
02. Eurochild (Euro Zero Zero)

Massive Attack - 'Girl I Love You' - Live at O2 Apollo,

Manchester, 28/01/2016

Massive Attack feat. Martina Topley-Bird - 'Clock Forward'

- Zénith de Paris - 27/02/2016 - France

Massive Attack & Tricky - 'Take It There' - Hyde Park, London, July 2016

23/11/2016

PJ Harvey - 'We Float'

..."You carried all my hopes
Until something broke inside"...

PJ Harvey - 'We Float'

"We Float"

We wanted to find love
We wanted success
Until nothing was enough
Until my middle name was excess
And somehow I lost touch
When you went out of sight
When you got lost into the city
Got lost into the night

I was in need of help
Heading to black out
'Til someone told me run on in honey
Before somebody blows your goddam' brains out
You shop-lifted as a child
I had a model's smile
You carried all my hopes
Until something broke inside

But now we float
Take life as it comes

So will we die of shock?
Die without a trial
Die on Good Friday
While holding each other tight
This is kind of about you
This is kind of about me
We just kind of lost our way
But we were looking to be free

But one day we'll float
Take life as it comes

Massive Attack, de Bristol à Brooklyn et Beyrouth: discussion le 26 novembre

Depuis 1991, le groupe Massive Attack incarne un métissage social et sonore britannique et s'attaque à l'actualité, dans ses raps, son art, sur scène...

Ce collectif unique m'a donné un tremplin pour raconter autrement les 30 dernières années, au Royaume-Uni mais aussi aux quatre coins du monde où ses membres se sont rendus, de Brooklyn à Beyrouth.

Bristol, 1985, rassemblement populaire pour dénoncer l'Apartheid en Afrique du Sud

Rdv le 26 novembre au Walrus avec Frédérique Labussiere et la Librairie Nordest pour vous en dire plus sur leur ville, Bristol, leurs origines, les groupes qui les ont inspirés et ceux qu'ils ont ensuite influencés.

RDV samedi à partir de 16 heures...