"The Voice, live from the Elysée Palace." This is how the French weekly magazine L'Express described Emmanuel Macron improvising as director of the opening ceremony of the July 26 Paris 2024 Olympic Games. The magazine also revealed that singer Aya Nakamura would be asked to perform an Edith Piaf song there. As soon as the French-Malian artist was mentioned as representing the country, without even waiting for confirmation, a wave of attacks from editorialists and far-right figures broke out, from TV sets to social media.
Karim Hammou and Marie Sonnette-Manouguian are two sociologists specializing in popular music and culture, who co-edited and co-wrote 40 Ans de Musique Hip-hop en France ("40 years of hip-hop music in France"). In their view, the issue of presidential communication needs to be placed at the center of this new controversy.
Sonnette-Manouguian: The criticism leveled at Nakamura has to be placed in the context of the way in which hip-hop music (rap and R&B in particular) has been the subject of polemics launched by the right and the far right throughout its history. If Nakamura has been perceived and publicized as a rapper, even though she defines herself first and foremost as a pop artist, drawing inspiration from everything from zouk to R&B, this is primarily due to the racialization of these musical genres, which are perceived as non-white. So, by a syllogistic fallacy, a black singer is often equated with a rapper.
The criticism she receives is reminiscent of that leveled at rapper Youssoupha, for example, when one of his songs was chosen to announce the French team for Euro 2021. These successful, racialized media figures are regularly used by the right and the far right to put reactionary debates on the political agenda that go far beyond artistic points of view. Nakamura is not the first, and certainly won't be the last, to suffer this racist, classist treatment by a part of the political and cultural sphere.
Hammou: There is an overexposure to criticism, even online harassment, of women and racialized people on social media, which comments on Nakamura have long illustrated. To understand her trajectory, we need to take into account the combination of sexism and racism that emerge from certain comments, because Nakamura's public image is at the intersection of these power dynamics.
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