Keny Arkana is releasing a new album
Before the Exodus
this Friday
.
She also announces to leave France because of "the health dictatorship".
A hymn to his city, Marseille and to its district, the city center, before setting sail.
Rapper Keny Arkana received
20 Minutes
in the premises of La Rabia, a symbolic place just next to the Place du 5 novembre, in Noailles, where two buildings collapsed in 2018. She is releasing a new album,
Avant l ' Exodus
, coming out this Friday.
Explain where are we?
Before in this room there was a social center, it is here that I did my first solo rehearsals.
It is also here that I launched the first assemblies of the people's rage.
It was symbolic that we get this piece of room back.
Basically it's mainly to relaunch the Rabia in clothes, and the CD that I release by my own means and not by record company.
The project is being streamed at Believe, but in a physical version I wanted to do it live with people.
Why ?
For a lot of reason, I already think it's healthier, if it's possible to develop something directly with people.
Besides, I'm very censored and boycotted by algorithms and all that, so it's important.
The more I can do without all the babylonery, the better because they are slowing me down and turning me off anyway.
I can see that the walls are tightening.
Is that the reason you didn't release an album sooner?
I am equipped now I do everything at home. For three years I have never produced so many songs. But I think I was in this position to create, making my little life of anonymous outside in my quiet town. Notoriety is not something that I experienced well at the time. Time flies, and when Mr. Jul called me last year for his project and saw the feedback from people, I realized that I had quit for too long. As my
Exodus
album
is not finished, I told myself I'm going to make a selection and come up with songs. I needed to kick. And be in consistency. The last album is called
Exodus
, but I've been confined to my neighborhood for 2 years… It was good to do
Before the Exodus
and pay homage to the people of my home, my neighborhood, the city center.
I try to shed some light on the poetry of my neighborhood and its inhabitants.
A hymn to your neighborhood ...
A homecoming before the big departure ...
What does it mean ?
You'll go ?
At the base the
Exodus
, it was the travel side, beyond the barriers, the borders.
I started the Exodus in 2014/2015 when I stayed in Mexico for a year.
Then I put it on stand-by, and I really came back to it when I started to equip myself at home.
So basically it's a title, but today it wasn't planned, but I'm leaving France.
I will end my exodus in exile.
Definitely, I think.
How did you go from an album title to a life decision?
Because of the health dictatorship.
I am one of those people who will not be vaccinated, I do not want to suffer the oppression that we are going to take.
If there had been any resistance I would have stayed, when I see that the majority of people, even yesterday's activists, accept everything, I tell myself that it is I who am not in my place.
Yes and I am too disappointed with people.
And I can't stand Macron and Véran, but I hate them to a point.
I no longer want to participate in this country.
Did you imagine leaving one day?
Yeah I always said that the day I stop playing music I'll go back to Latin America, but that wasn't planned.
It does not suit me, I have too many things in progress, I have a lot of projects in progress, and at the same time I do not see myself undergoing what we will undergo at the start of the school year.
Do you stop the music too?
After the
Exodus
we will see.
I would like to go back to something else, far from modernity and therefore far from music.
When I spend months with Zapatistas, I'm in the jungle, I'm fine.
What has always kept me in Babylon is the music.
At the same time it's a vital need to make songs, maybe I'll keep doing some of them.
No longer be a slave to inspiration.
She hits you anytime.
I can go three weeks without going out, without answering the phone, without eating for three days and I can wake up in the middle of the night, after a while it tires me out.
You've always been pissed off, but what pisses you off the most today?
Propaganda, yeah propaganda.
The fact that people are not informed, do not inform themselves.
I can't hear "yeah but we don't have a choice if we want to travel".
That, I do not understand, and besides it is false.
You can travel.
There is no room for critical thinking, for contradiction, for questions.
Intelligence is not to condemn, it is already to listen, and if it is illogical to say so.
This is the debate, but there is no more room for that.
You can debate, discuss, make mistakes, and change your mind, that's democracy.
There we are in the propaganda.
I know that I am censored a lot because of that, of my position.
How do you analyze the repression today?
In the 90s, there were a lot of police blunders but it was in the neighborhoods, among the sons of immigrants.
When it spoke of burrs or police violence it was a bit denigrated in "yes, oh it's going" mode.
For me, the trigger was the ZAD, finally outside the neighborhood.
A guy can be violent and in a uniform, and it's always classified without follow-up, it's just awesome.
Like the repression during the movement of the yellow vests, many amputees, drunkards, many seriously injured.
How do you see the developments in Marseille?
For the moment on the new municipality, nothing has changed and we must not forget that the metropolis has more power than the city.
And the metropolis is still the team in Gaudin, it's Vassal.
For me there is no change for the dislodged, etc.
Afterwards, I hear that not everything can be changed with a wave of a magic wand but hey.
Do all the citizens' initiatives that emerged following November 5 or during the confinement not give you hope yet?
Yes, basically yes, in recent years, the social movements that have taken place in Marseille are magnificent. Whether it is the Post M, the citizens' collections after November 5, the marauding of the MTP. A project like After M and what Kamel is doing is incredible. People are there because the town hall was not doing much and these movements have helped theirs. It is also thanks to all these movements that there was the Marseille Spring and that Marseille voted not for Rubirola, but to mark this change.
But the people we are talking about, for them there is not even a health dictatorship. For me today the real danger is transhumanism. For me, the struggles before are past struggles. Today we are dealing with human humanity, transhumanism is genetic engineering to transform humans into connected objects. When reality goes beyond science fiction. This is the 21st century. And for me the struggle of the twenty-first century is there, the child of the earth. The activists are light years away from digging this stuff out. There is no longer the right and the left, there is transhumanism. When I hear an Elon Musk say "yes we are going to implant something in the brain to listen to music, but the danger is all the same to be able to be hacked", me I am very good with my ears . It's scary.
How do you imagine your exodus?
My exodus is my album and my exile is… I will end my exodus in exile finally.
This is the feeling I have, to go into exile.
I'm moving the studio there, I'm going to finish it there.
In the end, it makes sense, when I started my
Before the Exodus
and my comeback in Marseille, I had not yet decided to move from France.
Today it makes perfect sense, I'm happy to have made some clips in my neighborhood, with people in my environment that I might not see for years.
Are you going to have time to share with the people of Marseille before leaving?
As I told France Inter, I boycott concerts in France as long as there is a health pass, all this segregation is out of the question.
I did not inquire about other European countries, how is it going?
Or something wild, a concert on the Plain, we'll see if it takes me.
I am leaving between September 10 and September 15 for Mexico, that's it, I have my resident visa.
I'm leaving alone, my exile is all alone.
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