14/08/2023
13/08/2023
More music writing
The American singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez went from oblivion to a career renaissance after his music developed a cult following in South Africa. He passed away on Tuesday at the age of 81.
And my US to France hip-hip mini-history for RFI English:
Hip-hop turns 50: How French rap became the 'second nation' under a groove
09/08/2023
Feeling blue... wondering about the meaning of "what we can and cannot control"...
Hello there,
Feeling blue tonight, after a few nice productive days.
Since the killing of Nahel in Nanterre, so near to us, I've been feeling really poorly, and so anxious, and I've realised that most French people are still not ready to speak about it, engage, empathise or care.
Luckily, I know a lot of concerned people, people who have experienced racism, and people who have experienced it here in France.
But with the others... Silence.
If not this advice: "Don't focus on what you can't control..."
Like we choose to "focus" on it. Again that narrative.
Do I reply to these friends, when they reached out crying that their garden has been messed up by the bad weather, or their property doesn't sell quickly enough, that they should focus on "what they can control"?
I don't, but maybe I should...
Meanwhile, no one is listening.
When the Colston statue was toppled in Bristol in 2020, during a Black Lives Matter protests, we all got to talk about the issue constantly for weeks. And not only about "blackness" or slavery, but about colonialism, history and their consequence on our daily lives. About systemic inequalities.
Here, now, in Paris, in France, what do I get?
Denial, silence, disinterest, distance, blame...
So I turned to my "other" best friend, YouTube.
Here is a useful short video, and advice for privileged people: Do get interested in history, and ask your friend 'how are you doing?'
Is it better to stay silent? The American white journalist ask.
No, the counselor says...
Wouldn't you have guessed? Seriously...
Anyway, if you need guidance, here is a suggestion where to start.
Thanks for reading,
m
07/08/2023
Latest news from Niger and West Africa
Monday 7 August2023, 13:51 paris time
A source close to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said this Monday that an immediate military intervention to restore President Mohamed Bazoum is not being envisaged at this stage.
But a summit of its member nations' leaders is possible in coming days to decide on next steps, the source added.
Nations like Italy and Germany spoke in favour of a diplomatic solution in the trouble west African nation.
Italy urged ECOWAS to extend the deadline and seek a diplomatic solution, with a similar call from Germany.
"We support ECOWAS in its mediation efforts, which are still ongoing," a foreign ministry spokesman told a press briefing.
Neighbouring Mali said it and Burkina Faso, both suspended from West African bloc ECOWAS over their own military coups, are sending a joint official delegation to Niamey to show "solidarity (with) the people of Niger".
They have said military intervention would be tantamount to a declaration of war.
Niger's military leaders have closed the nation's airspace and on Monday its skies were clear of traffic, according to the flight tracking website Flightradar24.
04/08/2023
Newsletter: Summer of Fires, Warmongers, and Angers
Dear readers, friends and passers-by,
If you’re here, you must be interested in world news beyond the western-centric agenda, and in people more than just army movements.
One of the reasons I came back to hard, daily news a year ago, and stopped writing only features and cultural analysis, was the treatment of the war in Ukraine in most global media, and its ‘black-n-white, power-obsessed, war-mongering, neo-Cold-War tone.
Since then, the words “war” and “massive attacks” seem to have become more than “back in style”, they are “trending”, they sell, and they contribute to make your stories count.
If this should be deplored, peace journalism revived, and solution studied, wars are also never treated fairly or equally around the globe.
Once more, the wars in Ethiopia, in Sudan, and in the Sahel are less important for western readers than the one involving their natural ally, the USA, and its stark enemies, Russia and China.
In my work, I try to correct these prejudices by focusing on humanitarian angles, the “rest of the world”, meaning the Global South, and in doing so not to headline on the consequences of the events in the places for France’s agenda only, or the US’s…
Here are a few recent articles to start with, and if you have questions, do write.
Thanks for reading as usual,
melissa
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Read on from here and subscribe:
https://melissa.substack.com/p/summer-of-fires-warmongers-and-angers
More on the situation in Niger: interview with an expert
Latest:
Niger: What to expect from the military men that led the coup?
The West African economic bloc ECOWAS gave Niger's putschists an ultimatum to bring back order before this coming Sunday. But, for now, president Bazoum is still under arrest in his palace in Niamey. Meanwhile, foreign mediations and sanctions have brought no results.
While army coup leaders cling on to power, Niger still waits for president's liberation.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden called for his immediate release, urging the "preservation of Niger's hard-earned democracy".
The president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, is hosting a meeting with the regional defence chiefs in the capital Abuja between until this Friday 4 August, as the new leader of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Nigeria and Niger's traditional international partners such as France and the USA put sanctions in place against the putschists.
But none of these measures have had any impact yet.
A predictable coup
According to Thierry Vircoulon, associate research fellow and coordinator of the Observatory of Central and Southern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa Centre at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), ECOWAS has rarely put into actions his ambitious declarations, even in the cases of previous coups and coup attempts.
And neither ECOWAS nor the African Union have the means to actually lead a military operation on the ground.
He told me that "what is at stake for now is the liberation of president Bazoum, nothing much".
According to him, the military coup could have been expected, both by Niger and France, which was assuring security operation in the country, against jihadists in particular.
"The leader of the presidential guard knew he had a chance to be dismissed," Vircoulon said, "as the level of corruption of the military and the security forces was becoming unsustainable."
To him, the more funds France injected in the "fight against terrorism", the more the military kept that money for themselves, creating an impossible situation for the president and his government.
On Friday 28 July, the leader of the junta, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, who stopped several coup bids in Niger, notably in 2021 and 2022, said his action was "motivated solely" by the desire to tackle "the continuing deterioration of the security situation, as the deposed authorities failed at it.
He promised to offer "a glimpse of a real solution for ending the crisis."
Lack of democratic power
Vircoulon adds that no political party or member of the civil society had voiced much support in favour of Bazoum.
"This show that this president has no popular support," he told me. "He is not perceived as a representation of a democratic process but more of a transactional power, based on cronyism."
To him, the coup shows the lack of democracy in Niger, as the coups in Mali and Burkina also revealed.
"These countries are not democracies," he stated.
As for the foreign support to the junta, they are to be minimised, he said.
"It is very easy to give a few people a few hundreds of CFA to hold a Russian flag, or to repeat conspiracy theories about the former colonial ruler, France," he explained. "The military knows how to designate an enemy, as this rhetoric easily works on citizens," who are living in poverty and don't feel represented by anyone.
It is hard to know more about what Nigeriens really want, he adds, because no opinion poll is ever conducted in the country, and members of civil society have been very quiet.
Only a few have published a statement, like the group known as "Tournons La Page", which urged military junta in Niger to assure a "rapid return to normal constitutional order", and all parties to "not inflame tensions or fuel radical rhetoric that could lead to war."
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An edited version of this text was published by RFI English on Friday 4 August.
03/08/2023
Following up on the situation in the Sahel
More soon, latest piece:
West African bloc meets to discuss Niger coup, saying a military
intervention would be "last resort"
Military
chiefs from the group were meeting on Wednesday to frame a response, while a
delegation was in Niger for negotiations, a week after a coup shook the fragile
nation.
West Africa's regional bloc ECOWAS met on Wednesday to discuss the extremely tense situation in Niger.
The Committee of Chiefs of Defence
Staff (CCDS) of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is
meeting in Abuja, in neighbouring Nigeria,
from 2 to 4 August 2023.
Nigeria is the current chair of
ECOWAS and West Africa's largest military and economic power.
The group said on Wednesday
afternoon that a military intervention in junta-ruled Niger would be "the
last resort".
The ECOWAS team is headed by former
Nigerian leader Abdulsalami Abubakar and is in Niger to "negotiate",
added Musah, speaking at the start of the three-day meeting of the grouping's
military chiefs.
ECOWAS leaders still hope to
reinstate Niger's president Mohamed Bazoum, 63, who won elections in 2021 in
the country's first-ever peaceful transition of power.
He was overthrown on 26 July when
members of his own guard detained him at the presidency.
The military's head, General Abdourahamane Tiani, has declared himself leader, but
his claim has been condemned internationally.
Sanctions
and pressure from Nigeria
Meanwhile, Nigeria cut electricity
supplies to intensify pressure on the country's coup leaders on Tuesday.
A source in Niger's power company
confirmed that Nigeria had cut off its electricity supply to its neighbour
as a result of the sanctions.
"Since yesterday, Nigeria has
disconnected the high-voltage line transporting electricity to Niger," the
source at Nigelec, the country's monopoly supplier, told AFP.
Niger is considered one of the
world's poorest countries, and depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power,
buying it from the Nigerian
company Mainstream,
according to Nigelec.
The leaders of ECOWAS already
imposed trade and financial sanctions on Sunday, and gave the coup leaders
a week to reinstate Niger's democratically elected president or face potential
use of force.
Nigeria's recently elected
president, Bola Tinubu, vowed to take a firm line against coups that have
proliferated across the region since 2020, most of them the outcome of a bloody
jihadist insurgency.
Support from Mali's,
Guinea's and Burkina Faso's juntas
Meanwhile, General Salifou Mody, one
of the Niger coup leaders, arrived with a delegation in Mali's capital Bamako
on Wednesday, as a senior Nigerien official and a Malian security official
confirmed.
They did not give further details.
Junta-ruled Mali, Guinea and Burkina
Faso warned that any military intervention in their neighbour would be
tantamount to a "declaration of war" against them.
Niger underwent four previous coups
since gaining independence from France in 1960.
Bazoum himself survived two previous
attempted putsches, and his considered as an ally of the current French government.
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Read more soon from my neswletter: https://melissa.substack.com/
Tunisie: Reshuffling in times of economic and political crisis
My latest article on the country:
Tunisia's President replaces his Prime Minister amid stark economic
difficulties
Tunisian
President Kais Saied sacked his Prime Minister Najla Bouden without explanation
on Tuesday night. He immediately replaced her with former central bank
executive Ahmed Hachani, tasked with overcoming the "colossal"
economic challenges in the North African country.
President Kais Saied
"terminated the functions" of his Prime Minister Najla Bouden,
who had been the first woman to head a government in Tunisia.
The news was disclosed by a press
release and a video released by the presidency shortly before midnight.
No official explanation was given
for dismissing Bouden.
However, several Tunisian media
outlets highlighted that Saied was displeased over a number of shortages,
particularly of bread in state-subsidised bakeries.
Saied immediately appointed in her
place Ahmed Hachani, who until now worked at the Tunisian central bank.
He studied law at the University of
Tunis, where Saied taught, but is unknown to the general public.
"Colossal
challenges"
The main reason for this sudden
change seems to be the very bleak state of the country's economy.
During the short ceremony, the
president stressed that "there are colossal challenges that we must
overcome with a solid and strong will, in order to protect our homeland, our
state and social peace".
In recent days, the government
held several meetings, including some with the president and ministers,
over the problem of shortages of subsidised bread in several regions.
Saied recently said "bread is a
red line for Tunisians", and, according to media, he fears a repeat
of the bread riots that left 150 dead in 1984 under Habib Bourguiba, the first post- independence
leader of Tunisia.
The country has been facing sporadic
shortages of flour, semolina, sugar, coffee and cooking oil for months, linked,
according to economists, to the requirement that suppliers be paid in advance,
which Tunisia has had great difficulty doing.
Needing
international support
The North African country is also
saddled with a crippling public wage bill from a civil service that employs
680,000 of its 12 million citizens.
It is struggling with debt of around
80 percent of GDP and seeking foreign aid.
Last October, Tunisia reached a
tentative deal for a $1.9 billion bailout from the International
Monetary Fund
(IMF) that would require the country to undertake a "comprehensive
economic reform programme".
The IMF has also called for
legislation to restructure more than 100 state-owned firms, holding monopolies
over many parts of the economy and, in many cases, heavily indebted.
But hopes of securing the IMF
bailout appear slim as President Kais Saied has repeatedly rejected
"foreign diktats that will lead to more poverty".
Besides being heavily indebted,
growth is around two percent while poverty levels are rising and unemployment very
high at 15 percent.
Political
crisis
These serious economic difficulties
in Tunisia are compounded by a political crisis it's been going through
for two years.
Bouden had been appointed by Saied
on 11 October 2021, after the president granted himself sweeping powers on 25
July by dismissing his then-prime minister and suspending parliament.
He also amended the constitution
after a referendum in the summer of 2022, greatly reducing the powers of
parliament, and granting the president's office unlimited powers.
Since his power grab, Saied has
ruled by decree.
A new assembly took office in
the spring of 2023 following legislative elections at the end of 2022, but
these were boycotted by the opposition parties and shunned by voters with a
turnout rate of around 10 percent.
The clampdown didn't stop there.
Since last February, about 20
opposition, media and business figures have been imprisoned in a wave of
arrests that included Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Islamist-inspired
Ennahdha party and one of the president's highest-profile critics.
Ennahdha had dominated coalitions
from the 2011 democratic revolution that culminated in the downfall of dictator
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and kicked off the Arab Spring uprisings across the
region.
They were all accused of
"plotting against state security", Saied personally calling them
"terrorists".
Amnesty International has labelled in a recent report the roundup a "politically motivated witch hunt".
Read more about Tunisia on RFI English:
https://www.rfi.fr/en/tag/tunisia/
31/07/2023
On the road... via London, with Carrie Mae Weems
Little stop by the Barbican centre, one of my favourite places in the world...
Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now
Explore the work and career of Carrie Mae Weems in this first major UK exhibition dedicated to one of the most influential American artists working today.
29/07/2023
My article from Womad 2023 for RFI
Reporting for RFI English's website.
A great year for Womad festival as music tourists flock to UK
The UK's summer festival scene has not only recovered from Brexit and Covid, it has never been more vibrant. And that includes the Womad international arts festival in the west of England where fans flock not just for the bigger names but "to hear music they've never heard before", the organisers tell RFI.
Womad stands for “A World of Music, Art and Dance”, and since it was co-founded in 1982 by Peter Gabriel, the festival has been bringing audiences schooled on rock and pop a wider range of performers from all around the world.
For this year's 41st edition, highlights include indie band Bombay Bicycle Club, afro-funk Ibibio Sound Machine, The Cinematic Orchestra Рknown for their distinctive fusion of nu-jazz, downtempo and film music Рthe Grammy award-winning British group Soul II Soul, South African artist Nakhane, Algerian singer-songwriter Souad Massi, and Malian songstress Rokia Kon̩, among many others.
"Womad was one of the first concerts I performed in Europe, as part of Les Amazones d’Afrique’s first tour in 2016," Koné told RFI.
"I have very happy memories of my visit to the festival, and I've been looking forward all year to coming back as a solo artist. I'm very excited!"
Award-winning Brazilian rapper, MC and singer Emicida from Sao Paulo was making his Womad debut, as was the London-based West African group Balimaya Project.
Percussionist Yahael Camara Onono, founder and leader of the 13-instrument Belimaya Project, said he'd started it to show what the African diaspora in London can do in terms of traditional, jazz and experimental music.
"I had heard of Womad all these years and it's a pleasure to finally be here," he told RFI. "So many African artists I loved performed here."
The band released their second album, 'When the Dust Settles', earlier this summer and will play at the Jazz à La Villette festival on 8 September, and in London on 17 October at the Barbican Centre.
More than music
The UK has long been a haven for summer music festivals, not least the flagship Glastonbury in Somerset, West England, Latitude on the Suffolk coast and All Points East in London – all three offering major international headliners.
Paula Henderson, Womad's artistic programmer, says that while their festival can't touch the likes of Glastonbury in terms of numbers, they're nonetheless unique.
"There is no other festival in the UK presenting artists from around the world," she told RFI. "People come here not only for the bigger names, but to hear music they haven't heard before."
NHS worker Anabel Provansal has been coming to Womad since she was 17, but this year she's also volunteering for Radio Womad, along with her radio producer friend Marcus Smith.
"Every year is amazing because the line-up is so surprising", she told RFI.
"The differences in music are so rich, from the Cinematic Orchestra to bands who are going to get you dancing! I also loved the workshops. Once I did a kora one, and we learned so much. There are also yoga classes, reiki and even life drawing."
"This year, I'm really looking forward to doing something totally different," Marcus said. "Over the years I came for the music. Last year I saw wonderful dance acts from Korea. This year, I want to enjoy the healing fields from the well-being tents and the cookery shows!"
A haven for music tourism
In 2019, in the wake of Brexit, Womad organisers started struggling to book artists – many feared they'd have difficulties entering the country.
Festival director Chris Smith said: "Lots of artists are finding they can get to Europe but fear taking the next step to the UK, particularly if there is there is no passport union."
The festival then had to face two years of Covid-induced cancellations.
Despite this, Womad returned with a bang in 2022 with headliners such as its own co-founder Peter Gabriel, Ghanaian-British rock band Osibisa and Indian-British award-winning music producer Nitin Sawney.
Not only have the UK's festivals picked up, they're doing better than ever.
A report published by industry body UK Music in May 2023 showed that a total of 1.1 million people travelled to the UK from overseas last year to attend a concert, breaking the one million mark for the first time.
Music tourism, the report found, contributed £6.6 billion to the UK economy.
'We'll keep going'
This year's edition of Womad is sold out and the team is upbeat.
"This year feels like it's the proper year that we've come back," Henderson says.
"With our big 40th anniversary, last year, we were testing the waters, post-Covid. It was wonderful, but there were, and still are, many challenges, notably with visas because of Brexit and the war in Ukraine.
"But we're not going to change what we do because of the context. We'll keep going and petition if we need to. This year we didn't have as many problems."
The final evening on Sunday has a strong African twist – Nigerian icon Femi Kuti and his band, Jamaican reggae veteran Horace Andy, Algeria's Souad Massi and the teenage Star Feminine Band from Benin are just a few in the impressive line-up.
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Read and see more photos on RFI English's website.
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