Why are those youtubeurs/pseudo journalists and people on social media downplaying the events of 1998-2002 and artists of the 3th and second generation ?
A few months ago, journalists started to make videos to down play the events that took place in period of 1998-2002 and also disrespecting some legends of the second generation that hadn't the chance to perform at those mythic halls, claiming that they weren't that big because of not having done these halls.
Don't they realize that back in the 1980s there were not alot of people from Congo-Kinshasa in Europe ? You had even more people from Congo Brazzaville in France till the early 1990s when people from Kinshasa slowly started to surpass them in amount of people. Back at time it was not a joke to perform at Olympia & Zenith. Artists from Africa performing there only on rare occassions. It was not for nothing that legendary band Kassav saw their first performance at Zenith de Paris in 1986 as a victory for not only people from the West-Indies, but also for black people in France
In the same period you had that war of the "zoulou's" against skinheads in Paris, because you had some quarters, places and towns where black people could not enter. The zoulou's ended up by winning the war, French people slowly moving to the province and getting replaced by African/Arab-families. When jb mpiana released balle de match and did his interview france24, you had a guy who was promoting a movie about that era.
In the era when Tabu Ley performed in 1970 at Olympia, you could do 4 or 3 days on the streets of Paris without having seen any black person. His event was seen by French speaking Africans as a big victory and followed by millions on the radio. After the event presidents like Tombalbaye of Tchad and Senghor of Senegal congratulated him for what he did and also gaved him medials of honor when coming in these because of the Olympia's succes. But today some people claim that it was a festival and acting like the event hadn't any impact
It was even for French rappers special to perform such kind of halls. Because their music-genre started slowly to become the main-genre. If was nothing to perform at Zenith and Olympia just being a normal hall like Showbuzz. Why didn't they do Bercy or Parc des Princes straight away ?Secteur A hyped up their double event at Olympia of 1998 in rapsongs and the children of African migrants were proud of Bisso na Bisso selling out Zenith in 1999.
Today things has changed. We are now with alot in Europe now and are keeping coming,the generation that came in the 1980s all became grandparents and having grandchildren.
