Few rappers have received the distinction of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, awarded by the Ministry of Culture. “Black mafioso” self-proclaimed, “poetist”, as he likes to define himself, master of rhyme for his peers, singer with a big heart for the public, Oxmo Puccino is one of the four French rap artists to have obtained it with Strasbourg’s Abd Al Malik, Normand Orelsan and the Marseille producer Pone.
But, in the eyes of the master of ceremonies of the 19e district of Paris, the greatest honor lies in the carte blanche offered to him by the Philharmonie de Paris from February 16 to 18. On Friday evening, Oxmo Puccino invites four emerging artists in whom he believes, sets up his television show on Saturday, “Bâtiment B”, broadcast on Culturebox, and on Sunday offers his repertoire in three different stage forms: the DJ and his MC, his songs with its touring musicians and its piano-vocal classics with Yaron Herman and saxophonist Thomas de Pourquery.
A sumptuous setting that this local child saw being built before his eyes, “the last stone in the building of La Villette park”, as he says, the place of all childhood adventures, of all youthful crushes. The opportunity for Abdoulaye Diarra, 49, to tell the story of his district and his neighborhood, Danube, from his childhood games to the urban legends of his adolescence, but also his adult observations which inspired his most beautiful texts: The Lonely Child, Love is Dead, Drawing Lines, Northern Sun…
Laughing children, bickering teenagers
In a Parisian café, Oxmo Puccino remembers: “I saw the City of Sciences being built. When I was a kid, La Villette was my playground, which went from avenue Jean-Jaurès to avenue Corentin-Cariou. At the time, there was a wooden dragon that slided on the other side of the Ourcq canal. It was a bit strange, this wasteland with a dragon. »
In 1975, his mother left with him Mali, where he was born a year earlier, in Ségou, for France to join his father, who had become a locksmith. Two more sons will be born. In primary school, the eldest sibling works on models of the future Cité des sciences, “a shoebox for the main building, a plaster ball for the Géode”. And every Wednesday afternoon, with a group of friends, he leaves his building, at 14, rue d’Alsace-Lorraine, to head along the railway line: “There was a palisade, then a vacant lot which went all the way to the Porte de la Villette. It was a journey. We walked with the cats, through the bushes, the weeds, on the rails. We were 8, 9 years old and no adults with us. I’m from the time when, at 10 years old, you could hang out in the street. »
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