Music and Social Change, Summer 2023 Edition
Or... how I try to survive a summer of social tragedies... Thanks to music!
Dear friends and readers,
After a few saddening summer posts, I’m trying to regain my strength and redeem my energy by doing what I love most: reading, writing, travelling and listening to music.
So, what’s better than reading and writing about music?
From my youth as a pop music lover to my first days as an apprentice journalist, music writing has always been my passion, but rarely my means of income.
It was a tough circle, especially in France, dominated by writers, older, whiter, “maler” than myself, recruiting each other.
Until in 2001, when I miraculously landed an internship at the famous Figaro daily newspaper, and befriended the brilliant culture editor, who was and still is mostly a music writer himself.
Long story short, this encounter changed my life, and thanks to his help, support, friendship and encouragement, I never stopped writing about music, even if I could not do it on a daily basis, let alone do only that.
Along the way, I wrote about books and literature, as I did my dissertation on the Czech novels of Frantz Kafka and Milan Kundera. I also wrote about cinema, especially after taking a course on the economy of independent filmmaking and working with a filmmaker. And I wrote about theatre a lot, as performing arts are the most linked to social and political issues.
And I managed to write about music too, mostly pop music and African music, as a political and African news journalist for international media.
Soon working mostly for radios, from 2008, music became part of my DNA.
Radio makers and musicians have a lot in common: from their love of studios, to their introverted sense of editing and listening, their attention to noises, and their insight into storytelling without the images…
But I had little time and few opportunities to do so. With my background and means, I had to work more than full time to live from journalism and be based in expensive cities, where major newsrooms live… So, I had to focus mostly on music… with a social conscience.
I was enamoured with African American soul music from a very young age, and to me it was linked to the civil rights movement.
As a teenager, I became starstruck with the likes of Sinéad O’Connor, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, and Fiona Apple, who all had a sensitivity to women’s place and role in this world, and to serious social issues.
I embraced hip hop, and the fire of rap, from the US, France and the UK, because the rappers had “a lot to say”, something that I was always criticised for myself…
In British music, one of my favourite, I focused on voices and songs with a strong message, from Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’ to Massive Attack’s duet with Sinéad ‘A Prayer For England’…
This year, after two decades of travels but also two years of Covid, music feels almost as strongly back in my life as it was until 2019, though not quite.
But still, I went to Womad and interviewed many artists I’ll write about until later in the summer.
August 2023 also celebrates the 50 of hip hop all over the world, and especially in the US, and in France, its unlikely second home.
Here, in the heart of this strange, convoluted, war-going and climate-upset summer, are a few pieces I’d love to share with you all.
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Womad musing
This year's edition of Womad was sold out and the team very upbeat.
"This year feels like it's the proper year that we've come back," programmer Paula Henderson told me.
"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 were just a few in the impressive line-up.
Watch and hear more from the Star Feminine Band here!
Read about them here.
You can read more about the 2023 edition of Womad here.
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-hop mini-history for RFI English:
Hip-hop turns 50: How French rap became the 'second nation' under a groove
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My next music story will be about an incredible London-based West African group, about to give concerts in Paris then London. Stay tuned!
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And for those of you who discovered my work recently with this newsletter, a reminder of my book on Bristol’s music and activism:
When Bristol music went 'Out of the Comfort Zone'
In 2019, Epigram Music sat down with Massive Attack's biographer Melissa Chemam to talk about her new book, ‘Out of the Comfort Zone’, as the group's trip-hop defining album Mezzanine celebrated its 21 years. The band are still the biggest to ever have come out of Bristol…
“The book is an intricate historical panorama of Bristol’s music scene from punk and reggae in the 1970s to hip-hop in the 1980s and trip-hop and drum and bass in the 1980s so I wanted to ask her why it was that it was Bristol that produced so much talent in such a short span of time.
What drew Melissa to wanting to write about Massive Attack and their Bristol origins was the same thing that has given the band a renewed sense of purpose: their social conscience.
Massive Attack use their light shows to make political statements with their Mezzanine XXI making use of graphic footage to raise awareness of the ongoing Syrian civil war and refugee crisis.”
Find the book from UK bookshop, Amazon, Waterstones…
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Do write if you want to add anything, or start a new conversation from there.
With best wishes,
melissa
Melissa Chemam
Journalist & Writer