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.
Working on the English version of my book. A journey through music and art, from the U.K. and towards many other territories, following the path of the band Massive Attack... It took me back in the Middle Age to the core history of England. Then in the Sixties with the rise of reggae music is some corners of Bristol and London. Coming up to my generation now, in the 1990s. Proofreading my Chapter 8 - and can only underline how much 1997 was a defining year in the recent history of British music! While The Spiritualized release their acclaimed third album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, in June, Radioheadcomes back with groundbreaking OK Computer...
Spiritualized - 'Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space'
Radiohead - 'Karma Police'
Just a few months before Portishead's second album Portishead, and their amazing single 'All Mine':
Portishead - 'All mine'
And in the middle of the busy year, Massive Attack release a very unexpected sound with their unforgettable single 'Risingson'...
Massive Attack - 'Risingson'
-
- To know more about the relations between Radiohead, Blur, The Spiritualized and Massive Attack, wait until the 8th chapter of my book... Definitely the most interesting era in British music since the Sixties!!
Bristol, la ville portuaire anglaise est devenue un mythe depuis les années 1990. C'est là que sont nés plusieurs courants artistiques majeurs. Le trip hop, côté musical. Et le Street art, côté arts plastiques. De Massive Attack à Banksy, la ville a donné au monde des artistes célèbres. La journaliste Melissa Cheman a consacré un ouvrage à cette ville et à ces artistes. En dehors de la zone de confort, paru aux éditions Anne Carrière. Ecouter ici : http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20161014-melissa-chemam-auteure-livre-dehors-zone-confort
-
In English:
Being in England this week (mid-January), I accepted BBC Radio Bristol's invitation to be on their Saturday morning show, with Dr Phil Hammond, to talk about my book :)
We mainly talked about the role of music in social change, from Patti Smith to Occupy London, and of course of Massive Attack.
Un mot pour annoncer que la librairie La Manoeuvre, rue de la Roquette Paris 11e, et moi-même organisons une rencontre - discussion - écoute - dédicace autour de mon livre, En dehors de la zone de confort, consacré au groupe Massive Attack et à ses influences.
La libraire met spécifiquement l'accent sur les livres consacrés à la musique!
Nous parlerons aussi de leur proches et des artistes qu'ils ont influencé, de Tricky à Banksy...
La rencontre aura lieu le jeudi 16 mars prochain - à partir de 19h. Et je serai en discussion avec le grand critique Bertrand Dicale.
L'adresse :
Librairie La Manoeuvre
58, rue de la Roquette, Paris 11e.
Pour infos, cette année, Massive Attack est en studio après une année 2016 intense - trois E.P., neuf titres inédits dévoilés, et deux tournées.
A bientôt, j'espère,
melissa
-
Plus d'infos sur ma page Facebook consacrée au livre :
Qu'ont en commun le Pont suspendu d'Isambart Brunel, l'acteur Cary Grant, le groupe Massive Attack et l'artiste de rue Banksy ? Ils sont tous originaires de Bristol, une ville moyenne de l'ouest de l'Angleterre. Une ville marquée par une histoire riche et complexe, mais encore jamais racontée ! Marquée par une fortune précoce liée à l'ouverture de l'Angleterre vers l'Amérique, elle devient aussi un des points névralgiques du commerce triangulaire. C'est justement cette histoire qui va nourrir, de manière inédite et radicale, la génération d'artistes éclose à Bristol à partir de la fin des années 1970. Tout prend forme lorsque qu'un jeune graffeur anglo-italien du nom de Robert Del Naja signe du pseudonyme " 3D " sa première œuvre de rue sur un mur de la ville en 1983. Avant de fonder le groupe Massive Attack en 1988 avec les DJs noirs Grantley Marshall et Andrew Vowles, il rencontrera les pionniers du post-punk de Londres et Bristol, les passionnées de reggae antillais du quartier de Saint Pauls, puis la chanteuse Neneh Cherry et le rappeur Tricky. Creuset inattendu mêlant hip-pop, reggae, soul et guitares rebelles, le premier album de Massive Attack, Blue Lines, sort en 1991 et provoque une révolution dans la culture populaire britannique. Massive Attack devient l'incarnation du succès d'un métissage à la britannique, et parviendra à toujours se renouveler, tenter de nouvelles révolutions et durer au-delà de nombreux mouvements musicaux des années 1990 et 2000, telles la Brit Pop, l'electronica et le drum and bass. Dans le sillage de cette créativité débridée mêlant musique, art et implication sociale profonde, naissent aussi les groupes Portishead et Roni Size, les mouvements nommés trip-hop et dubstep, et le génial Banksy, inspiré dès son plus jeune âge par les graffitis de Robert Del Naja. Depuis, la profondeur artistique de ces artistes et leur engagement n'ont fait que se renforcer, tout comme leur lien avec leur ville. Ce lien va devenir le tremplin qui les porte jusqu'à l'autre bout du monde, de l'Amérique à Gaza. Il pousse aussi très tôt Robert Del Naja à se mobiliser – contre la guerre d'Irak, pour les droits des Palestiniens ou, plus récemment, pour l'accueil des réfugiés jetés sur les routes européennes. Rébellion, art, musique, engagement, Bristol synthétise ainsi une autre histoire du Royaume-Uni. Une histoire qui amène au sommet des charts et sur le devant de la scène de parfaits autodidactes, et la part plurielle et afro-antillaise de la culture britannique.
In one of his first letters to Mary Haskell from Paris, Khalil Gibran captures what is perhaps the greatest gift of love, whatever its nature — the gift of being seen by the other for who one really is:
When I am unhappy, dear Mary, I read your letters. When the mist overwhelms the “I” in me, I take two or three letters out of the little box and reread them. They remind me of my true self. They make me overlook all that is not high and beautiful in life. Each and every one of us, dear Mary, must have a resting place somewhere. The resting place of my soul is a beautiful grove where my knowledge of you lives".
-
Responding to Gibran’s concern that his physical illness and its attendant creative block might disappoint her, Haskell sends the most beautiful and generous assurance a person who is loved could hope for:
I don’t even want you to be a poet or painter: I want you to be whatever you are led or impelled to become.
[…]
Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I’d like to see you be or do. I have no desire to foresee you, only to discover you. You can’t disappoint me".
-
The following year, as Gibran continues to struggle, she grants him the ultimate gift of love — the equal embrace of his inner darkness and his inner light:
Your work is not only books and pictures. They are but bits of it. Your work is You, not less than you, not parts of you… These days when you “cannot work” are accomplishing it, are of it, like the days when you “can work.” There is no division. It is all one. Your living is all of it; anything less is part of it. — Your silence will be read with your writings some day, your darkness will be part of the Light".
-
A few months later, having pushed through his creative and spiritual stagnation, Gibran attempts to put words around the immensity of his gratitude for this supreme gift of being seen, and loved, in his wholeness:
I wish I could tell you, beloved Mary, what your letters mean to me. They create a soul in my soul. I read them as messages from life. Somehow they always come when I need them most, and they always bring that element which makes us desire more days and more nights and more life. Whenever my heart is bare and quivering, I feel the terrible need of someone to tell me that there is a tomorrow for all bare and quivering hearts and you always do it, Mary".
You have the great gift of understanding, beloved Mary. You are a life-giver, Mary. You are like the Great Spirit, who befriends man not only to share his life, but to add to it. My knowing you is the greatest thing in my days and nights, a miracle quite outside the natural order of things.
I have always held, with my Madman, that those who understand us enslave something in us. It is not so with you. Your understanding of me is the most peaceful freedom I have known. And in the last two hours of your last visit you took my heart in your hand and found a black spot in it. But just as soon as you found the spot it was erased forever, and I became absolutely chainless".
-
Nearly a century after his death, the Lebanese-American painter, poet, and philosopher Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931) endures as one of humanity’s most universally beloved voices of truth and transcendence. But there would have been no Gibran as we know and love him without the philanthropist and patron of the arts Mary Elizabeth Haskell — his greatest champion, frequent collaborator, and unusual beloved.
Ever since I was a young girl, some of my favourite activities were singing along and translating lyrics... Playing with words, noticing the different accents.
English very soon became my special language, a language linked to music of course - and music taught me English really. A language of emotions and complexity too.
Then came poetry and literature and the love story is on-going...
Very lucky I am that television and pop culture brought into my life - in a very small apartment with hard-working parents who had not so much time to choose wisely what we would be watching or reading - that they brought into my life songs, Michael Jackson and with him the whole Motown family, soul music and gospel...
After seeing Moonlight last week, listing to the soundtrack:
Moonlight (2016) - Soundtrack preview
Moonlight (OST) - End Credits Suite
And especially tonight:
Barbara Lewis - 'Hello Stranger'
With the... Lyrics of course!
Hello Stranger
Barbara Lewis
Hello, stranger
(Ooh) it seems so good to see you back again
How long has it been?
(Ooh, seems like a mighty long time)
(Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh)
It seems like a mighty long time
Oh-uh-oh, I my, my, my, my
I'm so glad
(Ooh) you stopped by to say "hello" to me
Remember that's the way it used to be
Ooh, it seems like a mighty long time
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh
It seems like a mighty long time
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby
Oh-uh-oh (shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby)
Yes I'm so glad you're here again (shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby)
Oh-ahh-uh-oh
If you're not gonna stay
(Ooh) please don't treat me like you did before
Because I still love you so a-a-although
It seems like a mighty long time
Shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, ooh
It seems like a mighty long time
Oh-uh-oh, I my, my, my, my (shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby)
I'm so happy that you're here again (shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby, shoo-bop, shoo-bop, my baby)
A very special story to me... So loved Just Kids. Re-read it just a few months before my own book about music and art was out, last summer, while travelling to Sicily.
Patti Smith is an inspiration!
Patti Smith
First Encounters with Robert
The Louisiana Channel wrote today :
"Happy Valentine's Day! We celebrate love with Patti Smith who tells the wonderful story of her first encounters with Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her lover and friend, and who is celebrated in her memoir 'Just Kids.' All is love "
In this interview Patti Smith tells the wonderful story of her first encounters with Robert Mapplethorpe, who became her lover and friend, and who is celebrated in her memoir Just Kids.
When Patti Smith shares the story of her first encounters with Robert Mapplethorpe, who was not a famous photographer back then, her feelings are visible to the audience at the Louisiana Literature festival. She also talks about the loss of Robert and calls Just Kids a story of unconditional friendship.
Patti Smith was interviewed by festival director Christian Lund at the Louisiana Literature festival, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark in August 2012.
Edited by: Honey Biba Beckerlee
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2012
While Radiohead's fans are currently appalled by the band's decision to play in Israel this summer, I'd like to share more about Massive Attack's work to try and raise attention on the situation the Palestinians are going through...
Obviously, this is one of the many greatest reasons that decided me - a social / political journalist - to write about the band and Bristol's history.
When we talked about the issue for my book, this is what Robert had to say:
"Sometimes you
feel like an impostor when you do these things, that’s a fear. Human rights
lawyers can help, but what can a musician do? It’s just drawing attention by
being there but there are certain lines not to cross. In Palestine, and Lebanon it’s heartbreaking because it has lasted so long. Coming from Britain and
knowing our history in the region, you want to do engage".
-
It's still so true...
Here are extracts from his other interviews on that matter:
Massive Attack on helping Palestinian refugees:
Massive Attack -
2007 Sky News Interview
More on Massive Attack's work with the Hoping Foundation:
In February 2007, massive attack performed three sold-out benefit concerts for the Hoping Foundation (at the Carling Academy in Birmingham, and two at the Brixton Academy in London) to support Palestinian children in refugee camps across the Middle East. In late 2004, Primal Scream, Spiritualized, Nick Cave and other musicians donated their time organizing a special benefit concert for the children of Palestine at the Brixton Academy. 3D, Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, DJ’d at this first Hoping concert, and continued to look for ways to support Hoping’s work for the children of Palestine.
Over the summer of 2006, Massive Attack began raising money for the HOPING Foundation on its tour of the European continent and America through its paying guest list, and raised awareness of the UN agency that serves Palestinian refugees, UNRWA (Hoping for UNRWA), by distributing thousands of leaflets at their concerts.
At the three concerts performed in February, Jason Pierce and Spiritualized opened in an acoustic set accompanied by a gospel choir. The concerts also provided a showcase for Palestinian musicians. The concert was opened by a DJ set from Checkpoint 303 followed by oud players Le Trio Joubran.
The Roskilde Foundation kindly donated to Hoping’s work with Palestinian children, supporting the Brixton concerts with a donation
Massive Attack make Gaza statement using headline stage at Longitude Festival
The long-time supporters of Palestinian freedom used graphics and lighting to highlight their solidarity
Award-winning band and veteran political activists Massive Attack used their headline slot at Longitude Festival this weekend to highlight their solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
The musicians played at Marlay Park, Dublin, on Sunday, kicking off their set with ‘Battlebox’ before using their backdrop to send out messages to the packed audience.
As the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) continues to bombard Gaza with air strikes while Hamas fires rockets into Israel, Massive Attack used its position to show its long-time support of Palestinian freedom.
A lit-up message behind the performers said: “Gaza has been ocupied [sic] or under restrictions since 1948.”
He spoke of his backing the cultural boycott of Israel as it “applies the continual pressure that’s needed.”
“The boycott is not an action of aggression towards the Israeli people,” Mr Del Naja said.
“It's towards the government and its policies. Everyone needs to be reminded of this because it's very easy to be accused of being anti-Semitic, and that's not what this is about.”
Massive Attack shows its support to Gaza at Longitude festival in Dublin
Demain, mardi 14 février, à 14h14 - Parce que les rituels sont des cadeaux ancestraux pour le vivre ensemble... Créons nos propres rituels ! Rappel visuel :
La sweet artiste Anne Cazaubon va encore frapper. Avec Veronica Antonelli (chanteuse lyrique), elle a concocté un moment de grâce spécial Saint-Valentin, dédié à tout ceux qui aiment l'amour.
Célibataire, offrez-vous un tourbillon d’amour pour appeler l’élu(e) de votre cœur! En couple, venez vous embrasser à pleine bouche sous une pluie de cœurs à Montmartre!
La performance artistique « La Bouche en Cœur » est sans aucun doute, ce que vous verrez de plus beau en ce jour de Saint-Valentin !
De l’amour plein les yeux et les oreilles !
Avec Anne Cazaubon (#flyingproject) et Veronica Antonelli (Artiste lyrique)
Souvenir ému de mon premier visionnage de "Sometimes in April" de Raoul Peck, en 2006, au Festival du scénario de Bourges, un peu après la Berlinale... J'ai vu tous ces films précédents cette année-là, et tous les suivants depuis! Bonne chance à Berlin et good luck for the Oscar !!! -
Festival de Berlin 2017 : dix talents sous les projecteurs
Le réalisateur de Lumumba (2000) et de Sometimes in April (grand moment de la compétition berlinoise en 2005) sera au Panorama avec un film qui fait déjà sensation, et pour cause : Je ne suis pas votre nègre est en compétition pour l'oscar 2017 du meilleur documentaire.
Raoul Peck y fait résonner les mots de l'écrivain James Baldwin qui, dans un texte inachevé, rendait hommage à trois défenseurs de la cause noire sacrifiés, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X et Martin Luther King. Lu par Samuel L. Jackson, le texte a été enregistré, pour la version française du film, par Joey Starr. Je ne suis pas votre nègre sera diffusé prochainement sur Arte.
Mais Raoul Peck ne s'en tient pas là : il présente, hors compétition, un autre film, Le Jeune Karl Marx, qui retrace la rencontre de l'auteur du Capital et de Friedrich Engels, à Paris, en 1844.
Legendary British film critic, Peter Bradshaw, reviews Raoul Peck's biography of Karl Marx, currently competing in Berlin... Read below.
I've been fortunate enough to help this film come about when I worked with Raoul Peck, in Paris, in 2005/06, to help him when doing research on the subject, re-reading Marx's texts and looking for material for the film.
So proud to see it now ready for the big screen!
I've learnt so much thanks to Raoul. I couldn't be more grateful.
What an extraordinary choice of subject. Especially considering how hard it is to get this type of projects financed. Raoul worked more than ten years on this film, while working on his film about James Baldwin, the incomparable I Am Not Your Negro, which has been released in the US early February, and on two films shot in Haiti, his homeland.
Genius with a real vision of what cinema can be.
Both films will soon be released in the UK too.
-
Guardian's review:
The Young Karl Marx review – intelligent communist bromance
Marx and Engels meet cute in this intense, fervent film about the early development of communism from I Am Not Your Negro director Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck is the Haitian film-maker who has an Oscar nomination this year with his James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro. Now he comes to Berlin with this sinewy and intensely focused, uncompromisingly cerebral period drama, co-written with Pascal Bonitzer, about the birth of communism in the mid-19th century. It gives you a real sense of what radical politics was about: talk. There is talk, talk and more talk. It should be dull, but it isn’t. Somehow the spectacle of fiercely angry people talking about ideas becomes absorbing and even gripping.
Despite the title, it is not exactly about the young Karl Marx, more about Marx’s bromance with the young Friedrich Engels. Given the potent presence of his wife Jenny, they for a microsecond almost threaten to become the Jules et Jim of the Revolutionary left. Peck saves up his biggest joke, or coup de cinéma, for the very end. After an austere movie featuring men in top hats and mutton chop whiskers, the closing credits explode in a boisterous and even euphoric montage of political events in the 20th century – Che, the Berlin Wall, Ronnie and Maggie, Nelson Mandela, the Occupy movement – to the accompaniment of Bob Dylan. No Stalin or Lenin or gulags or Erich Honecker in the montage, though.
Marx is played by August Diehl: ragged, fierce with indignation and poverty, addicted to cheap cigars, spoiling for an argument and a fight. Engels, played by Stefan Konarske, is the rich kid whose father is a mill owner, with a dandy-ish manner of dress and a romantic mien, like a young Werther who isn’t sorrowful but excited about the forthcoming victory for the working class.
They meet cute. Marx glowers on being introduced; he remembers the young Friedrich from an earlier encounter, strutting and entitled, for all the world as if he had invented the class struggle. The chippy young bruiser clashes with the arrogant puppy. But the ice breaks: Engels admires the clarity of Marx’s material thinking; Marx is a massive fan of Engels’s groundbreaking study of the English working class. Together, they inhale the new thinking in the air, ideas for which Pierre Proudhon (seductively played by Olivier Gourmet) is partly responsible. Expelled by the French, Marx flees to London with Engels where they are invited to join the socialist fraternity League of the Just, and lend intellectual and methodological rigour to their evangelical movement. But the break with Proudhon emboldens them both, and in slightly entryist style, Engels finally declares to its stunned annual congress that the League of the Just is to be reconstituted as the Communist League.
This is a film which sticks to a credo that people arguing about theories and concepts – while also periodically angrily rejecting the notion of mere abstraction – is highly interesting. And Peck and Bonitzer pull off the considerable trick of making it interesting: aided by very good performances from Diehl and Konarske, although a real flaw is the film’s relative lack of interest in their partners: Jenny, played by Vicky Krieps, and millworker Mary Burns (Hannah Steele) with whom Engels is in love: it is a rather perfunctory relationship.
There is a tense moment when Marx and Engels chance across a wealthy mill owner who is a friend of Engels’s plutocratic father: Marx coldly challenges him with his practice of exploiting child labour and says that the market force that demands this is not a law of nature, but a matter of manmade “relations of production”. The man replies sneeringly that this phrase sounds like “Hebrew” to him.
The action of the movie proceeds at a steady, intense rate: a pressure-cooker tempo, which despite the periodic shouting and yelling, does not vary much. But you can see Marx visibly ageing from his mid-20s to the brink of 30, exhausted by the birth of communism and the composition of his Communist Manifesto. It shouldn’t work, but it does, due to the intelligence of the acting and the stamina and concentration of the writing and directing.The action of the movie proceeds at a steady, intense rate: a pressure-cooker tempo, which despite the periodic shouting and yelling, does not vary much. But you can see Marx visibly ageing from his mid-20s to the brink of 30, exhausted by the birth of communism and the composition of his Communist Manifesto. It shouldn’t work, but it does, due to the intelligence of the acting and the stamina and concentration of the writing and directing.
"
