Alain-Philippe Durand (ed.), Black, blanc, beur: Rap music and hip-hop culture in the francophone world. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002. Pp. xvii, 150. Cloth $49.50, Paper $24.50.

Extract

This book is a collection of 10 articles treating different aspects of francophone rap music and hip-hop culture. Despite the facts that the first French rap recordings date from 1984 and that France has since become a center of rap music second only to the United States, this is the first book devoted to the subject. André Prévos begins the volume with a history of French rap music from its origins through the 1990s. Here we are introduced to many of the names that appear in later chapters. The following chapters treat the regional specificity of Marseilles rap (Jean-Marie Jacono); rap audiences in Marseilles (Anthony Pecqueux); the politics of French rap (Paul Silverstein); rap as a social movement (Manuel Boucher); hip-hop as an aesthetic subculture (Anne-Marie Green); an ethnography of tagging (Alain Milon); hip-hop dance (Hugues Bazin); rap in Libreville, Gabon (Michelle Auzanneau); and rap in Québec (Roger Chamberland). All the chapters except those by Prévos, Silverstein, and Chamberland were translated from French.