SLAM!

Last Sunday night I went with Caitlin and her roommate Rachel to Just 4 U for a poetry slam. I guess it made sense that if hip hop was that big here, slam might have a following too. The event was called Slamicalement, and was headlined by a duo of young male poets born in Senegal but raised in France. I knew they weren’t raised in Senegal because I couldn’t understand their French at all. I hadn’t had a night where I just sat around smiling catching just a word or two in a while, I guess that’s progress. The links between hip hop and spoken word were further reaffirmed when several of the biggest names in Senegalese hip hop showed up and performed. Awadi, Xuman, BMG 44 and other rappers were there and some did a capella rap verses and apologized for not being poets while others did their songs with their beats. There was a random rap group that lip-synched their song for no apparent reason (it’s not like they were being filmed for television or something). The funniest thing about the whole evening is that the MCs kept puncturing the performances by screaming “slam” periodically. The poets tried to engage the audience in call-and-response where they said “slam” and expected the crowd to say the same. I am not a slam expert; but I have never heard of anyone doing that before.


I don’t speak French well enough to have understood all of the poems, but it seemed typical slam faire, some funny poems, some funny love poems, some cheesy love poems and some poems dealing with the politics of identity. Therefore there was a poem about the notorious French shooting of Senegalese WWII veterans that had fought for the Free French that were protesting peacefully for the pensions they had been denied. Then of course one of the MCs tried to hit on my friend. When that didn’t succeed he hit on the three French white girls behind me. It reminds me of the Little Brother song “Yo-Yo” where the underground hip hop rappers criticize the black coffee shop culture launching sexist and homophobic attacks on rappers “trying to battle me with sandals and capris on, come on dawg.” Yet they were completely right when they exposed the hypocrisy of male poets who “at the end of the night are just trying to fuck like me.”

Then it rained and we got rained on. A lot. No cab wanted to go to my neighborhood because the neighborhood before mine gets terrible flooding so it was difficult getting a cab. As soon as I mentioned the name of my neighborhood, and before I could try to explain in my broken Wolof and French that there was another non-flooded way to get there, the cab drivers would rudely drive off. Eventually I got one, and then the guy asked me if I was from Cote D’Ivoire. I said no, but it felt nice. It was the first time I had gotten something other white, and although African migrants get no love here I would rather be a ñak than a toubab. Slam!