SessionLab
Rocé: "It is in the struggles that we understand hope"
Audio 48:30
The SessionLab podcast with French rapper Rocé.
© RFI
By: Hortense Volle
3 mins
The EP
Poings Serrés
(2021) announced it to us: Rocé, the French rapper with piercing eyes and a sharp verb, is preparing a 5th album.
In the meantime, the child of Bab El Oued is exhibiting vinyls whose covers tell of the struggles for emancipation.
Portrait full of hopes of an artist for whom the fight is
"
a lifestyle"
.
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An Algerian mother, a father of Russian origins, resistance fighter and expert in false papers, José Youcef Lamine Kaminsky, alias Rocé, arrived in France from Algeria at the age of 4.
We are in 1981 and the family moved to Thiais, in Val-de-Marne (94).
First spotted by Manu Key (Mafia K'1 Fry) who invited him to include the song
Respect
on the album
La rime urbaine
(1996), Rocé released his first
tracks
in 1998 on Dj Medhy's label.
Me, I pass the baccalaureate!
24 years later, I'm damn proud to take you to meet an artist whose sounds I grew up in and who can boast of being one of the most beautiful feathers of French rap.
To his credit, four major albums:
Top Départ
(2001);
Crescendo Identity
(2006);
The Human Being and the Lamppost
(2010);
Gunz n'Rocé
(2013).
A compilation also:
Par les damné.es de la terre
, released in 2018 on his own label, Hors Cadres.
24 rare tracks from the 60s to 80s, a panorama of working-class songs, performed in French by artists from the former colonies.
A 5th album is in preparation and, in the meantime, Rocé has concocted an exhibition for us: "What the covers tell us".
It brings together a selection of vinyl whose covers tell a story that is too often overlooked.
That of social, union, decolonial, feminist struggles… in short, emancipation struggles.
To discover it, head to Feu Continu, the cultural space of Verdragon: the house of popular ecology installed since the spring of 2022 in Bagnolet, in Seine-Saint de Denis, in the northeast of Paris.
And it's Rocé himself who shows us around!
The exhibition "What the covers tell us" is open until July 15, 2022. Every Friday - in the morning for groups (by appointment), in the afternoon for all audiences. For any request:
verdragonmep@gmail.com
.
Verdragon is a space managed by the associations
Front 2 mères
(which works in the field of access to education) and
Alternatiba
(which works in the field of popular ecology).
SessionLab by Hortense Volle
: a conversation in complete privacy and in 3D audio (spatialized sound).
A podcast to listen to, preferably, with headphones.
Directed
by: Benjamin Sarralié
Sound recording and 3D mixing
: Fabien Mugneret
Production
: RFI Lab
Bandcamp / Facebook / Instagram / YouTube
► Titles broadcast
Excerpts from the EP
Poings Serrés
(Excluding executives – 2021):
Tight fists
;
Capitalists
;
Han Solo
;
Stand up
Excerpts from the compilation
Par les damné.es de la terre
(Excluding frames – 2018):
Blanchi
(Guyana 1988) – Léon Gontran de Damas;
Mr. Indian
(Quebec 1972) - Peloquin / Sauvageau;
It works, it works, and it shuts its mouth
- Troupe El Assifa
Excerpts from the album
Gunz n'Rocé
(Hors Cadres - 2013):
In apnea
;
My rap is hanging by a thread
;
habit
Excerpts from the album
The human being and the street lamp
(
Big Cheese Records / Hors Cadres
– 2010):
so few understand
Excerpts from the album
Identity in crescendo
(No Format – 2006):
I sing France
;
The Metec
;
Memory problems
;
One and many
Excerpts from
Top Départ
(
Chronowax Music - 2001
)
:
For the horizon
;
Change the world
;
We get used to it
And also :
Franklin Boukaka's
Immortals
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