From Tunisia, Malek Khemiri remember another number, hangs up twice because in the payphone, the police "look". Then he asks to be recalled and speaks, "stressed", ready to "deal" being cited in this article. He feels watched. Malek Khemiri is not a political opponent nor a trade unionist. He is a rapper.In a country that has known since the mid December an unprecedented social protest, the rappers seem to be a target of the plan. Thursday, January 6, Hamada Ben Amor, 22, was arrested and released three days later. In a video broadcast on the Internet, he called the head of state, Zine El-Ali AbidineBen: "President, your people died." "Rap is the voice of Tunisian youth," said Malek Khemiri.
A "conscious rap" that transmit with his band Armada Bizerte, Bizerte, north of Tunisia. Musical style popular among young and well established in the country, rap is inherently contentious, as the singer and student of 23 years. Broadcast on social networks like Facebook, this music is shared quickly and managed to circumvent the official channels of speech.
In his writings, in Arabic, where slip a few passages in French, Malek Khemiri wants to denounce the "inequalities in the distribution of wealth," but also "poverty, injustice (...), corruption." Lak3y, rapper also owned (like Armada Bizerta) in group Sounds of Freedom, has just launched its music studio because, despite a degree in computer graphics, he has been unemployed for three years.
"We work, we study but remains unemployed. Without piston, is unemployed. The moral situation is too serious." In a piece titled ironically "Tunisia is fine," he recalls in Arabic "the people asleep," "unemployed", the "bus [that] when carrying two hundred and fifty people remain at the station".
If these rappers express their fear of unemployment and decommissioning, they appear especially their need for freedom. "I want to be free in my movements, my expressions. I want to be free without fear, because if you give me my freedom, I will find my value and my honor," Lak3y raps in a song, tellingly entitled "Need expression.
" A need Lak3y explains with verve: "I'm young, I'm 24 years old, I experienced anything in my life. I want to travel, but I can not do anything here! (...) We die here!" The need for expression, Malek, Armada Bizerta, opposes the "culture of fear" that is "embedded among Tunisians." "We do not talk politics in the cafes," says the young rapper.
No politics in cafés or in the songs of his group. Like the risk involved if clearly denounced the plan, insisted the rapper in a song: "I am not against the system but I am against oppression." The rapper wrote a song yet to respond to the self-immolation of a young greengrocer December 17.
An incident which led the protest movement. In the song, entitled "Music of the Revolution" the band evokes in Arabic "the bad economic situation", the "electric atmosphere" and instills in English: "Dude, do not stop, fight for your rights . Do not stop, and you can see the light. "Malek For This challenge was partly relieved by the population:" The Tunisian people argued, we can talk, it has won a share of lost liberty.
" This freedom conquered by the auction rappers, yet remains under surveillance. Lak3y, who says his fan page on Facebook and his profile Skyrock have been censored a few months ago, received a new warning recently. "The police came to see me and they told me: 'Are you brave enough to do that? Watch it at you." In response to these attempts to muzzle freedom of expression, he details his plan to force action: "I have to rap, and rap and rap again." Flora Knees
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