Racism swirls around Paris Olympics over black superstar

Pop superstar Aya Nakamura has found herself at the center of a racism storm ahead of the Paris Olympics. She is the world’s most popular French singer, whose hits have been streamed 7 billion times and who made history last year when three concerts in Paris sold out in 15 minutes. But Aya Nakamura alleged racism and ignorance after far-right politicians expressed outrage at the possibility of her singing at the Paris Olympics.

On Friday, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into alleged racist abuse of the singer during the Olympics scandal. The complaint was filed by the France-based International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism.

According to The Guardian, President Macron has yet to confirm that he wanted Nakamura to headline the Olympic opening ceremony, performing hits from 1950s cabaret legend Edith Piaf. But complaints from right-wing politicians and television pundits that Nakamura is not French enough have exposed deep roots of racism and class prejudice that threaten to tarnish the Games.

Rachida Dati, the culture minister, warned against “pure racism”, while Liliane Thuram, a former French footballer, said: “When people say Aya Nakamura cannot represent France, what criteria do they base that on? I know the criteria because when I was a football player, some also said that this is not the French team because there are too many black people there.”

As The Guardian notes, Aya Nakamura, 28, grew up in a housing estate in the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, precisely the communities that the Paris Olympics promised to showcase and celebrate. Aya Danioko was born in Mali and came to France as a child. She lived in Aulnay-sous-Bois with her siblings and mother, who was a griotte, a traditional Malian poet or singer. She took the stage name Nakamura from the superhero drama Heroes and was discovered as a talent after posting songs online at the age of 19. Her unwavering texts about love and relationships, which she writes on her phone, quickly amassed a huge following.

French music critics argue that no other singer in French history – not even Piaf in her post-war glory – had such a global reach as Nakamura, with fans on every continent, of all classes, backgrounds, ages. Her most famous song, Djajda, has nearly a billion views on YouTube alone. Her music is distinctly French, influenced by French-Caribbean zouk-pop from Guadeloupe and Martinique, mixed with Afropop rhythms. But while some major French exports such as Daft Punk prefer to sing in English, Nakamura has amassed a huge global fan base singing songs in French.

When politicians including right-wing Senate leader Gerard Larcher this week attacked Nakamura for speaking poor French because she uses slang, other singers responded that it was part of a long tradition of artists performing in French, from the poet Baudelaire to the musician Serge Gainsbourg.

Mekolo Biligui, a rap journalist, notes: “This scandal says a lot about what racism is in France. This is not the first controversy of this kind. When the French football team chose rapper Youssoupha to record their Euro 2021 anthem, controversy erupted on the far right. When rapper Black M was scheduled to perform at the centenary of the Battle of Verdun, controversy arose, fueled by the right. The list is getting long. What these performers have in common is that they are black. There is a problem with black artists in France. For a long time, France knew how to hide its racism. Here the country can no longer hide it.”

She said pop singer Nakamura was wrongly called a rapper in a televised debate this week simply because she was black.

“I measure the popularity of an artist in France by when they start performing it at weddings,” notes Biligui. “You hear Nakamura being played absolutely everywhere, especially at weddings, because she’s so popular that she’s the soundtrack to every aspect of people’s lives… There’s an element of classicism to criticizing her French just because she uses slang. The vitality of the French language lies in the fact that it has always had a lot of slang from different cities and regions, from the north and south, and especially from the melting pot of Paris… This scandal tries to reduce Nakamura to the fact that she comes from a working-class area and has an African heritage origin. But in fact, it is completely of its time and is an integral part of French culture: it is influenced by zouk, Afro-Caribbean pop music from Martinique and Guadeloupe, that is, France. Her music is 100% French.”

Christelle Bakima Poundza, an author and critic whose recent book Corps Noir, about black women in French fashion, tells the story of how the award-winning, best-selling 2021 French Vogue cover was the first for a French black female artist. She warned that the Vogue cover came relatively late in Nakamura’s career, and she had far fewer magazine covers in France than other white singers, despite selling millions of records.

It is unclear whether Nakamura will compete at the Olympics, but the Paris organizing committee is trying to limit the damage from the scandal. “We are very shocked by the racist attacks against Iya Nakamura,” the statement said.