93 Hardcore, East Side: clichy-s/s-bois

Like Magellan, I didn't quite succeed in my attempt at circumnavigation. Fortunately, unlike him, I came out alive. Although we both shared some transportation issues. Granted I got a late start, and granted it was Sunday, but intra-banlieue transportation in Île-de-France is painfully slow, which is easily its own strike against the state's urbanism: in Paris proper, one is never more than 1/2 kilometer from a métro station. The density obviously justifies the extensiveness of the métro network, but it just about dead stops outside of the city limits, with only a few lines reaching into the suburbs. And in contrast, the buses and tramways are much slower and much less frequent. But that's out of kilter in a metropolitan region where the city proper is more than four times smaller in population than its environs.

There is the RER, or commuter rail, which plays its own questionable role in the relationship between Paris and the banlieue -- Les Halles, where four of the five lines converge, resembles an immigration checkpoint as much as a subway stop, as police and RATP security are always out in force, checking for tickets and then checking your papers if you look North African . . . they were practically corralling non-whites on New Year's Eve when the métro ran all night.

But I made it out eventually, arriving at Clichy-sous-Bois, infamous flashpoint of last years "évenements" (commemorated in the graffiti at the top). It's a bleak place for sure, big concrete tower after big concrete tower.


This is one of the nicer looking ones, as I ran out of camera battery before I got to the peeling paint, dilapidated exteriors, barren yards. But no matter the outside aesthetics -- or interior, for that matter, I can recall reading a few articles that point out they're just normal looking apartments inside -- it's mostly a matter of location.
I saw what an ordeal it is just to get to/from Paris, where the bulk of any potential job opportunities would be (most of the cités were built to house factory workers during the post-war industrial boom, which now post-post-war is post-industrial with no more factories). And of course, as this sign indicates, by car is probably the best way to go -- not always the most affordable means of transit.

As the other direction points to, of course, there's a town nearby. Each of the communes (municipalities, essentially) of the banlieue that are now known for their cités began simply as small villages on the outskirts of Paris. While I didn't make it to Clichy-sous-Bois's centre ville, I passed through adjacent Livry-Gargan.


It was Sunday market day, a scene that could have been lifted from any side street in Paris. To that extent, I think the Banlieue 13 vision is unfairly dystopian. There are more than just housing projects surrounding the city. Saint-Denis, for example, is home to the stunning Basilique de Saint-Denis, royal necropolis since the 12th century (a more worthwhile visit than Notre Dame). The towns proper sometimes live in tension with the cités that started cropping up 50 years ago, but there's enough pride in them that they'll retain their identity.

Vis-à-vis the cités, I wrote in my somewhat hasty (and uninformed) banlieue commentary about the lack of pride or ownership in the communities. It's still a largely valid point -- litter everywhere, for example, and hardly a Rio-style residents' association in sight. They just seem to suffer from neglect, plain and simple.


Kids making a soccer field out of whatever flat patch of dirt they can find, burned out wreckage of exactly what I don't know. A lot of loitering, lingering, killing time. A few folks fixing cars, some teens pumping some bass out of a stereo in a parking lot. Someone blew by on a 4x4, getting his thrills however he could. Pure anomie.

Like the Soviet housing blocs I visited in Berlin (as always, blog post TBA), there's nothing you can do about housing projects once they're already there. It's a not a configuration conducive to mixed-use -- the best East Berlin's Marzahn neighborhood could muster was a shopping mall (the commercial counterpart of a housing project, I guess), the best Clichy-sous-Bois could offer was a McDonald's and a few scattered municipal services (elementary & middle school, firehouse).


The département (Seine-Saint-Denis, postal code 93), for its part, tries to build up some sense of civic engagement with its own reformulation of the Republic's "liberté, égalité, fraternité." Most noticeably, it addresses the New Year's well-wishes to "citizen." Immigrants' children, born in France, are French citizens, just like Jacques who can traves his ancestors back to Charlemagne. It's been an enormous sticking point, however. While their parents fleeing poverty or political upheaval abroad were content to have a home and a job, their children are frustrated by location, unemployment, and systematic discrimination, all of which make it easy to forget -- or at least not believe in -- the values of citizenship.

Ultimately, it's an intractable problem. Such buildings are good housing, in a utilitarian sense, and I understand economics don't permit the demolition and reconstruction of . . . what, exactly? How do you artificially create a home, or a sense of home? I'm still firmly convinced that, whatever the housing pressure, without a sense of ownership (not necessarily a legal sense, as favelas prove) there won't be any civic pride. 24 Rue de Banque's squatters or the camp-in along the Canal St Martin take better care of their spaces than they would if they were installed on the 20th floor of a dilapidated cité. And ennui-inducing as they are, as my professor Alain Bertho has told me, no one is happy when a cité is razed.

Instead, there's a gritty pride inspite of itself, like the braggadocio of banlieue bloggers (fr & a fee, sorry, but tags like "93, département le plus hardcore!" as an indication). Or, for that matter, rapping.

Mac Tyer - 93 Tu Peux Pa Test

You can't test 93, the title goes. But the refrain closes, "j'oublierai jamais la banlieue qu'on brûlé" (I'll never forget the banlieue that one burned). Ambiguous in its phrasing: the 3rd person impersonal 'on' (like the English 'one did this or that') is common enough in French, so is Mac Tyer using it out of habit, or purposefully distancing himself from the events? (He could have used "nous", 'we'.) Treading the line between approval of the flames and simple acknowledgment. Will he never forget because of their effect on him, his home, his family? Their effect on the media attention to the problems of the banlieue? Because he participated?

Production-wise, it sounds like it's lifted straight from American commercial hip-hop . . . same old story. I got it off the Rap 2 Bandit Part 10 mix tape, which opens with "remixes" of Rick Ross and Chamillionaire -- basically the original with long instrumental gaps during which French rappers jump in.

The style is called "hardcore" in French. Perhaps taking its name from Ideal J's 1995 "Hardcore", banned on French radio for its explicit lyrics ("Hardcore, as if I'd thrown a bomb at Disneyland", for example).

Ideal J - Hardcore

While Rap 2 Bandit seems to buy into bling & bitches American rap hook line and sinker, some of the other mix tapes I snagged have some very intense political consciousness, like L'Emeute ("The Riot", a term used to described Nov '05).

All acquired at the Marché aux Puces (flea market) of Saint-Ouen, quite a francophone melting pot. But that'll have to wait for a West Side post.

Get Domestic

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
--Emma Goldman

Off the French political beat for a hot minute -- not that I tend to stay on it for too long, of course. We're two days out from the first Tuesday in November. In (dis)honor of that occasion, here are some words&sounds to get you through it.

• DJ C drops the perfect Election Day 2006 soundtrack on the Riddim Method, continuing his venerable 'B' Series DJ Mixes. I shot him a DVD full of funk mp3s -- maybe 'Brasil' is somewhere in the works.
• No beef if you don't want to vote, of course, given the way representative democracy works in a country of 300 million people. Here's some ammo to bolster your defiance: Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine pre-2004 on being a principled non-voter; more libertarian intransigence from LewRockwell.com.

It's bizarre to be sitting in Paris, contemplating absentee ballot choices for a suburban county in Maryland. I've lost pretty much all attachment to such mediocre local politics. I credit a few candidates for spending the postage to actually cull my name from the absentee rolls and send pamphlets transatlantic. Not that it helped -- it's far from thrilling to watch county executive candidates duke it out over who can best maintain Howard County's suburban landscape. Or who's got a more compelling vision for "downtown Columbia" (marked most prominently by a shopping mall). Bleak prospects in a town that's gone from '60s social experiment to management by a company that specializes in shopping malls. . . . I need to get registered somewhere else. Here's hoping I'll have a more exciting U.S. address come November 2008.

For now, I'm absolutely torn on this race. For all those Howard County orphans' rights experts, any suggestions?

The Bass Connection, Part 1

Wayne asked if I could post a list of which Miami bass tracks caught the ears of the funk faithful down in Rio.

I picked up two CDs of Miami bass at the pirate stands of Uruguiana market. Unfortunately I don't have them physically with me, so I can't scan you the covers. But here's the track list of the first:

Miami Beat Vol. 11

1. The Beat Club - Security (Remix)
2. N2Deep - Toss Up
3. Toddy Tee - Just Say No
4. Svemtyle - Weekend Tool
5. Renard With No Regard - How Hard Can You Throw It?
6. Beat Master Clay D & The Get Funky Crew - Move Your Body to the Beat

This is one is incomplete because some of the tracks didn't rip to mp3 -- and without the CD, I can't recall what the other tracks were (nor does Google turn up anything for "Miami Beat Vol. 11" or similar searches).

Of the 6 tracks I do have, there are two odd ones out: N2Deep and Toddy Tee are both early 90s Southern California rap groups, examples of the sound that became popularized by the likes of 2Pac and Dre (cf "California Love", et al.). That's not terribly surprising given that this is theoretically volume 11 of a compilation series -- the roster gets a bit then by that point, I imagine. Doubly unsurprising given that Miami and California comprise two-thirds of most Brazilians impression of America. New York City is the other terra cognita, with Texas/Washington forming a bizarre twin identity in people's minds on account of Bush. I suspect that'll pass after '08, however.

What we're left with, meanwhile, are some decidedly Miami tracks, if not always identifiable ones.

The Beat Club have a verified Miami history, although the track in question, "Security (Remix)", comes off the A-side from an eponymous 12" released in 1990 after they moved to the UK. That would help explain why this version sounds more like straight dance music (the Discogs' bio notes that they hooked up with New Order's manager upon arrival). This track also presents a good example of the Miami-Rio borrowing, live and direct:

First, note the keyboard stab at 1:13-1:16:
The Beat Club - Security (Remix)

Compare to the opening of one of my favorite recent funk tracks:
Peko, Marcelinho, and MC Gil do Andaraí - Treme Terra

Moving on, Renard With No Regard and Beat Master Clay D offer two fairly textbook examples of both strains in the Miami music scene of that era. "How Hard Can You Throw It?" winds a single chorus and snappy drum machine hits & handclaps across a very skeletal structure -- just a pure, deep bass track -- while "Move Your Body to the Beat" works the more lush sound of freestyle.

Unfortunately, I can't identify the last track. "Svemtyle" and "Weekend Toll" have both turned up nothing in my searches, nor have the scattered lyrics. Hear for yourself and let me know if it rings any bells, but it's definitely squarely in the bass tradition, feeding in trademark snippets of "Planet Rock" and "Whoomp There It Is"-style bass.

Svemtyle - Weekend Toll

The identification issue is definitely a tough one. It took some digging to get tracks 5 & 6 named properly. From the CD I had them as the fairly incomprehensible "Ther - How Hard Can You" and "Tamber Raider - Crow Time", respectively. But a disregard for accurate attribution is nothing new, as the mess of my pirated funk CDs can easily attest to. It all reinforces an attitude pervasive in the funk scene that names and ownership of the recording are not as important as the live performance. Why, indeed, so many recordings I did get were simply from live performances.

Certainly a lot of this stems from simple economics. If you're among Rio's poor (as funk MCs often are), studio time is expensive. It's worth cutting a track semi-professionally so you have something to give DJs and are able to promote yourself among those who can pay you. Why bother recording for the purpose of a CD release when it's only going to be sold as a pirated copy?

And so, without the music-as-industry that we're used to in the States (take another look at Wayne's article again -- I just finished it today and it resonates quite a bit, the general trends he discusses as present in Jamaica are surely universal for popular music in developping countries), the emphasis is less on the objective (recording) and more on the subjective (performance). Everything, it seems, is wrapped up in the performance. Paul's thesis elaborates upon the socio-political aspects of the performance, my understanding of funk's economics all point to the performance as the main revenue source, and as a result (or because of?) all this, the music itself is generated more at the performance than anywhere else. That is to say, baile and funk are inseparable.

It's a double-edged sword, ultimately. The MC's life is not an easy one, as I witnessed. From the hustle of trying to get gigs, to the frenetic weekends of singing at multiple parties in the same night, to the impossibility of income from recordings, funk's flexibility is also its curse. From a theoretical standpoint, I think it's fascinating -- the openness, the fluidity, the subjectivity, the bricolage, the perfomativity -- but I can't forget the human element of it all. Paul ultimately demures from calling funk revolutionary, and looking at how it works in practice, I can only agree.

[booty bass rumblings into philosophical speculations part 2, coming soon. more tracks, better tagged, but also more predictable.]

Tying up loose ends: St. Martin FM

Almost two weeks into my stay in Rio & have plenty to say, but before I do, I want to make some brief comments on where I was before coming down to Brasil: St-Martin/Sint Maarten. It's more or less your typical Caribbean holiday destination, with an economy dependent on (and currently thriving on) tourism, as it's far too small to have much in the way of industry or natural resources. As such, it's also too small to have many of the same social problems that plague the likes of Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica. It may be apocryphal, but I've always been under the impression that the island has 100% employment (at the very least, while some residents are poor, there is nothing I've ever seen in the way of grinding poverty or homelessness).

It's one somewhat interesting claim to fame, however, is that it's the smallest island in the world to be partitioned between two nations. In this case, the Dutch and the French.

The distinction isn't massively important -- the border doesn't consist of much more than a sign (see above), a la crossing a state line, and on an island of this size you're likely to cross it several times a day. However, such proximity does sharply contrast the cultural differences between the two.

The French side is actual French soil, as the commune de St-Martin is part of the departement d'outre mer of Guadeloupe. They use the euro, they're EU citizens, they vote in French elections. In short, the exact same political rights and privileges as someone living in Paris. Consequently, the ever-cushy French welfare state takes care of St-Martin pretty well, such that it's not over-developed, maintains some architectural consistency, and is generally a little slice of Gallic paradise in the Caribbean (the food can't be beat). Again, too small to produce the firebrands of francophone thought along the lines of Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, or Maryse Conde. [which certainly make Martinique and Guadeloupe far more interesting places in a world-historical sense, but this is family vacation and besides, I didn't have much of a say.]

If the French use the long arm of the government to keep things, well, French, then the Dutch, as expected, do the exact opposite: they let capitalism run wild. Part of the Netherlands Antilles (hope you can read Dutch), Sint-Maarten still uses the Antillean guilder of all bizarre currencies, although the entire island never turns down the Yankee dollar. More autonomous than the French commune, the NA's eyes are clearly flush with dollar signs and in the last several years development has been occurring at a breakneck pace (although at least one voice is suggesting some restraint). Between the cruise ship hordes descending upon Philipsburg's duty-free stores to rape and pillage with their Visas to the glitz of casinos, the Dutch side has always had a certain middlebrow air.

Maybe it's the boom of the last couple years or maybe I've just wised up to it after visiting for so many years, but the Dutch side of the island is becoming an ersatz Vegas. Its status as a shopping and gambling mecca is joined by a further injection of Americana courtesy of the excessive strip mall that now characterizes the first couple miles in either direction of the airport, populated by the likes of Ric's Place and Soprano's Piano Bar (I'm sure a few HBO execs wouldn't be pleased by that wholesale logo appropriation).

American hegemony, cultural and otherwise, in the Caribbean has been SOP since at least the Monroe Doctrine, but it's still a marvel (and not necessarily a good one) to watch a place slowly turned into an American middlebrow theme park. [as urban critic Dave Hickey argues, Vegas is the vast, green middle of the American self.]

Moreover, as I can't help but notice, this dialectic also plays out musically. Rental cars are the best way to get around, and while I'll confess that I did bring an iPod/tape adapter on occasion, I've had years to get acquainted with the radio band down there. The Dutch side's strongest signal, Laser 101, follows its nose up north to come up with a top 10 that's probably cribbed straight from last month's charts on Hot 97 with a token rock track thrown in (this year it's the Chili Peppers).

French radio, however, offers an interesting pastiche. Between St-Martin's chief broadcaster, Radio Calypso, and neighboring St-Barthelemy's Radio St-Barth, the listener shuttles between the region's chief cultural hegemons. Sure, the U.S. looms large and there's always a pop hit or two that's played several times a day (in this case Shakira & Wyclef's "Hips Don't Lie", whose Caribbean tint I'm sure doesn't hurt its reception; I realize a Colombian and a Haitian do not an American make, but in production and marketing they sure do). They jostle alongside the latest from France -- usually a mix of ballads and house tracks (Bob Sinclair's "World Hold On" was unstoppable) -- and then choice Anglo-American house from the last couple of years. [with the French holding the house banner so high, you'd think "acieeeeeeeeed" was first yelled with a French accent] Last year's house-remix-of-classic-rock format is still popular, and I heard plenty of 2005 faves Max Graham vs. Yes - "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and Deep Dish ft. Stevie Nicks - "Dreams" (the latter made for a perfect 6 am closer to a dawn drive home and according to my brother, Stevie re-recordedcorded the lyrics in the studio where the original Fleetwood Mac song was cut). Finally, Jamaica can't be left out: Vybz Kartel's "Rich Rich Rich" was definitely the dancehall song I head the most over the airwaves.

Reggaeton, as the current musique du plume of the Caribbean, was largely absent from the FM dial, although that's not a total mystery given the lack of Spanish-speaking islands in the immediate vicinity. There were some car soundsystems pumping CDs (as evidenced by the occasional skipping track) on a Sunday at Mullet Bay, although eventually some jerk had to overpower it with what I think was soca (sorry, but I'll take snares over brass any day).

As a final note, I'm focusing so much on the radio because if there's a local music scene in St. Martin, I utterly failed to come across it (and in truth didn't look very hard in the first place). My brother and his wife, on the other hand, who made friends with an incredibly friendly security guard at the island's mega-club (a little present of some hard to find NBA gear goes along way; Gilbert Arenas, bringing people together), got invited to the Bad Boy Party on the day that I left. Apparently held in the heart of Philipsburg, it was a local soundsystem featuring dancehall and reggaeton MCs. He reports that it was top-notch with pumping 15-ft speakers and a one-story stack of mids and subs. Friendly enough that they earned a "Shout out to my white boy and his blond girl chillin' in the place." It's refreshing to hear that even in the depths of Philipsburg, there's still enough local creativity to resist the complete Vegasification of "the Friendly Island."