The Devi Dasi

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Category: French Rap

April 4, 2019April 12, 2019 Radhika

Day 3 – French Rap

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Man what do you say about someone who has been there through it all - the terror of falling from grace, the rush of falling in love, the reality check of mental illness, the conversations about things you wouldn't dare tell anyone else, the revelations of our human frailty, the polar difference yet commonalities of race and class politics, the laughter at 12 year old boy humor, the candidness about family, the non-judgment of a psychiatrist, the empathy of a soul sister, the dramatics and betrayal of evolving friend groups and the very natural Aries response of screaming from the opposite end of the university's largest amphitheatre that she thinks you're a whore. Ashley, you have been my rock and even when weeks or months go by, you somehow always manage to make time for playing phone tag with me. I can be my whole ass self with you and even when that annoys me or you or when we are brutally honest with each other, I can always trust that it comes from a place of deep love. Thank you. For being, existing and always embracing me into your world even when I bitch about being in bed at 9:30.

As a lot of you know, my love affair with French rap begin in the Autumn of 2017. I had arrived in Paris for work, dripping in American naïveté that traffic was endemic to America and that my Indian Standard Time could be easily accommodated. When my Uber driver Ahmed, fretfully informed me that traffic was bad and that what should have been 30 minutes would take an hour, I gave in. Ahmed became my music guide, deftly navigating his playlist from Niska’s “Tubalife” as we hurtled through Issey-Les-Molineaux to PNL’s moody “Jusqu'au dernier gramme” as we sat in traffic near the Tour Eiffel. By the time we reached, I had Shazam-d through most of the tracks and Ahmed asked if I liked what I heard. My enthusiasm probably frightened him but I left the car with his playlist and what I instantly knew to be love. French rap is in so many ways similar to and different from American rap. When questions of hip hop being dead are resuscitated, egged on by long standing neophobia around mumble rap, trap and other trends in modern acoustic incarnations, the content remains universally understandable. French rap grapples with issues of identity, police, drugs, weapons, incarceration, gang violence, new money and territorial geography (“la zone”). Rappers tend to be young men from poor, urban neighborhoods, honestly describing their lives and proudly representing their cities (Marseille, Paris), neighborhoods (93, Corbeil-Essonnes, Montreuil) and their ethnic origins, echoing an immigrant identity crisis and desperate desire to elevate their families out of forced systematic inequality, racism, and despair. Family (tié la famille) takes on a critical role, extending beyond the blood (“le sang”) and encompassing loyal friends. Many rappers bring in words, beats and references to their countries of origin, Algeria, Congo and Senegal being the most common. Beats can range from Afrobeats and Maghrebin music to trap. Perhaps the most unique feature, however, is the deep melancholic introspection, bordering on existential crises, that many of these artists share in their verses. (Original footage courtesy of my 2017 Instagram story). #100daysofcritiques ∆[3/100]

Quality and quantity: words used to describe the mutually exclusive impasse between a job well done and job done many times over. In a post Industrial Revolution society, where "fast food", "fast fashion" and "fast relationships" have taken over, quantity is often prioritized for the sake of convenience. At our core, we are social creatures. Capitalism inherently asks us to sacrifice our most invaluable assets, time and mindshare, in exchange for the comfort and convenience money can buy. I think about how this translates to the realm of relationships; it is often easy to cultivate a large quantity of shallow relationships for the sake, once more of capitalism. Networking is valued to continue contributions to the capitalistic structure; people are commodities and relationships are the casual currency by which these commodities are exchanged for opportunities. Divisiveness pervades and politics has become our identity so much so that we immediately disregard an entire human for their offending if differing beliefs. And an individual's space, the physical expanse that they can create to separate themselves from one another, has become a literal hallmark of wealth. No wonder we suffer from such a high rate of loneliness and depression. Nurturing quality relationships, investing in them and reaping the harvest of mutual trust and affection requires time, patience and effort. It requires seeing beyond the societally dictated markings of an individual and diving deep into what makes their soul happy. In our memorable yearly reunions, Ru Jih and I saturate our limited time together truly living, filling the hours with as much deep conversation and hilarious adventure as we can. I feel positively recharged and capable of so much. This Rothko, with its deep saturation and movement from light to dark reminded me of the depth of this relationship and the turn our conversations can take from light hearted jabs at microinfluencer culture to pontifications on death. What do I know? In all actuality, we had 15 mins to explore the MoMa so we asked a guy laughing at our mad dash through the hallways to take a picture to help us commemorate. #100daysofcritiques ∆ [2/100]

I love how art just finds you sometimes. Or better yet, how you can see it and disregard it and then suddenly it becomes super pertinent to your life based on circumstance or chance. My brother, @kcparashar, talks about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon where an introduction to some information causes it to show up again and again in your world. It has been there all along, but the sudden identification and cognizance of its existence even once makes it familiar and repetitive. The first picture was my introduction to Mondrian. A stroll through a random San Francisco neighborhood and a fascination with and subsequent photograph of a window treatment. I came home and Googled "blue and red square art work" and somehow stumbled upon Mondrian's work. It seems so simple; squares and rectangles in primary colors, juxtaposed together in various positions. But I remember being completely struck and amazed by his work. Soon after, we met again at MoMA and after that, his name was solidified in my personal canon of favorite artists. Art doesn't always have to be realistic or incomprensibly "bourgeoisie" or hard or relegated to to a rich person's world rendering it completely inaccessible. It doesn't have to always be beyond the scope of what you yourself could possibly produce. Oftentimes it is a single introduction that sparks an interest that can stay with you. It is about vision, about feeling, about the incomprehensible incandesent light it switches on in that distant corner at the intersection of your mind and heart. #100daysofcritiques ∆ [1/100]

every year, on sitarani appreciation day, I am given an opportunity to reminisce on how much I'm grateful for in this relationship and this year is the first in a while where I haven't seen you in a full year. this photo is now ten years old, and in those ten years, I have been fortunate to have you as someone to laugh with, cry to, send messages to, chat with at ungodly hours, eat with, sleep with and have my life changed for the better by. we are living such different lives and still, I am pretty sure I have talked about with you with every set of friends I have cycled through. through middle school, high school, Berkeley, Delhi, Vrindavan, Oakland and now Santa Clara, there is always something you have persevered through or some example from your life story that I can be inspired by. you were thrown serious lemons this year and girl did you make some Lajpat Nagar lemon soda with extra masala. I think about your Vrindavan pastimes, the way you take care of your babies, the way you so carefully think about your friend's problems, your tenacity when things get hard, your ability to move around and make motherhood seem effortless, your kindness even when we gossip, your cakes and cookies and noms that I can't have because you're so far away...I think about everything I want to share with you, music and memes and movies and trips and Astro jokes and laughs, even when you're not here, and I am still convinced that one day we will be close enough to go over for chai and swap cookie recipes. Until then, I cannot wait for this summer. I cannot wait for so much. Life will continue to change us and mold us into our own unique entities, evolved in experience and emotion, but fundamentally the same at a soul level. Hopefully, we will continue to have the patience to persevere through whatever medium of communication we need, to express the depths of our emotions to one another and know that whenever in the world we are, whatever the experience, whatever problem, there is a kindred soul sister able to empathize in the most validating of ways. Have a donut for me today, I love you ❣️

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget." - Arundhati Roy life can't really be as serious as our minds make it out to be. in a world where instagram and social media reign supreme, comparison will always be the thief of your carefully fabricated joy. your heart will ache as you wonder why you're not nearly as likable or popular as the person doing the things that for a flickering moment seem like the thing you absolutely want to do and getting thousands of likes for it. then you realize what went into that process and think again. as people around you are accoladed for milestones you seem so far away from achieving and you realize you don't have anything amazing to post about one weekend, it isn't insane for you to feel like everything is insurmountable. when everyone tells you you're #goals and so amazing, your inner critic will shout them out to remind you that you're twenty six and there are people half your age doing more and being more and achieving more and you don't have the emotional aptitude or wherewithal to be where you want to be. and where is that? the ephemeral destination, success, we are all running towards? is it a carefully crafted amalgam from years of curating other people's successes? is it what people tell you you're good at but you know can't pay the bills? is it jaded by the pressure of feeling like everyone is watching you stumble in the dark with no margin of error? it has become a common experience. i don't have a solution, friends. i am constantly trying to steal my joy back. it is an insane time to be alive and the existential crises behind a smile are very real.