Special report

Groundbreakers of the ghetto

From Abidjan to Chateau Rouge

Paris 

13/01/2011 - 

At a time when the big names in the record industry are worrying about their future, how are small community production outfits pulling through? RFI Musique investigated set-ups located in the “ghetto” at Château Rouge and the Gare de l’Est – afro neighbourhoods in the capital of “global sound”, Paris.

The Château Rouge neighbourhood in Paris is a meeting point for African immigrants. This colourful quartier sports the brightest wrappers, afro hairdos and mounds of fish and spices directly imported from Africa. One tiny area houses dozens of music shops offering the latest releases to get compatriots from Kinshasa, Abidjan and Conakry dancing, or just thinking. Yet, given the background of widespread crisis in the music industry, these small retailers need to find ways to resist.

Last Mohicans

Four or five years ago, the small business Dramé Alimentation was producing Guinean artists like Sayon Camara as a sideline to its sewing and grocery activity. It was fairly typical at the time for shopkeepers in the area to plough their profits into artistic production, based on advice from friends and family back home.

Today, the manager is trying to shift the last of his CDs and DVDs and swears he won’t invest another cent in the sector: “It’s finished for music!” he complains, slamming the door. A bit further up the rue Doudeauville, in the shop that houses Lampe Fall production, regulars pass by to say hello and get news of home. Some young women are buying the new album by Daba Seye, kaftan-clad men are digging out religious cassettes and cola nuts. The company imports so many albums directly from Senegal that the shop is piled as high as one of Dakar’s Sandaga market stalls. But despite its standing in the neighbourhood, Lampe Fall has stopped producing music and has opted to focus on retailing as a way to survive the crisis.

So where are the Château Rouge producers of former times? Many have disappeared. A young woman directs us to one of the last Mohicans in the flourishing sector of Congolese rumba, Sonima Music, in Paris’s 10^th arrondissement.

High demand

Sandwiched between two Turkish kebab houses, Sonima Music produces albums by people like Koffi Olomide, Montana and Joss Diena. Its director, the Pakistani Nadim Mohd, started out producing Indian films in the 1990s. “African customers came to buy Bollywood films. The demand was really high! I produced the first Guignols d’Abidjan and had great success with a DVD of a Koffi Olomide show at the Orée du Bois restaurant at Porte Maillot. We used to play a few tracks and publicise the release date, and on that day there would be a queue going right on to the street! There was a grapevine effect and people came in to buy. That music gives them a link to their native country. The same people are still consuming music, but now they do it on the Internet.”

Nadim Mohd goes to Kinshasa and Abidjan to listen to new music and promote talents unknown in France. He has been at the root of several “success stories”, like coproducing the first Magic System or Gloire à Dieu by the Espoir 2000 “posers”. But he is investing less and less: in 2010, Sonima Music only bought out two albums. “In five years, our sales have quartered!” he insists. He will try to produce a few new disks in 2011, just to attract customers into his shop.

Getting out of the Ghetto

Leaning on Sonima’s counter, the young Ivoirian producer Scottie from Job Records is still confident. “People need that music to get them dancing like in their own country, or to bring them news of the atmosphere back home. That’s why Espoir 2000 was such a success, it’s a news flash on Ivoirian society!”

Armed with his satchel and his car, Scottie has been distributing records in the neighbourhood for ten years. He drops off albums of Ivoirian and Senegalese music in eateries, hairdressers’ and call centres. In other words, “the ghetto”. “Ghetto means anything produced and distributed outside mainstream circuits,” informs Scottie. “Community circuits that people at the top don’t know about and that continue to sell despite everything.” With his artisanal approach, Scottie manages to produce around eight albums and compilations per year and sells around 2,000 copies of them. “If you want to live decently, you have to get out of the ghetto,” he assures.

Breaking ground

In 2011, he is planning to break “into the Other World”, with the first album by Ivoirian reggae musicians, Farafina X-men, spotted in Côte d’Ivoire by Ismaël Isaac. Scottie has invested 20,000 euro in this disk, which is five times more than usual, and took care over the production. “Ghetto music tends to be heavy-going and badly mixed. You have to take care with the arrangements, but keep that distinctive ghetto colour of a sound that people aren’t familiar with here,” he says smilingly.

This is what community productions are trying to do: get original sound tracks from African capitals and surprise the French public with them. And at a time when record sales are collapsing, a lot of the major labels are on the look out for new big successes in the vein of Magic System.

In Africa and France alike, they are rooting out for information and calling round their networks. The big labels are also interested in using the “ghetto” distribution circuits to sell of some of their products that sit half way between “the two worlds”. Scottie, for example, took the DVD of Alpha Blondy’s Zénith concert from the FNAC and went to sell it in Ivoirian eateries: in a month, he sold 300 of them – not a bad score given the context. 

Yet, despite all of these small successes, the situation is not easy. Production in the neighbourhood is on borrowed time: those who haven’t stopped yet have given themselves another one or two years. All will depend on whether they manage to carry on breaking new ground on the music scene.  In an increasingly uniform musical world, the ghetto and the “other world” could both really benefit from it.

Eglantine  Chabasseur

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper