no.10 june 2006

+snapshot.

french liberation radio
bordeaux. france
+kouassi kra magali

For the second installment of our snapshot series we travel to France and drop in on our new friend Koussai Kra Magali. Koussai (Aya to her friends) runs a radio show that offers a global perspective on art and culture. Being that Nat Creole has been known to deal in such issues, we decided to ask Koussai to give us a little insight into her world. Being the kind woman she is, she obliged. Here is what she had to say…

The University of Bordeaux, said to be the largest campus in Europe, is located in Bordeaux’s surrounding country side. Pessac, a suburban town around a 15 minute drive from the city centre, is one of the three towns that host this big campus and it is where Radio Campus Bordeaux is located. (I can’t help adding thatit is also where the francs bank notes and coins are created including the ones of the CFA zone in Africa- countries in Africa that were formerly under French rule!!!)

As I write it is a typical Saturday in Bordeaux, the day we call Market day. Weekend has started in this French countryside town which has got some slave trade records in its history book beside its famous vineyards. St Michel and Les Capuchins are crowed, noisy, nuff afriKan voices, smells, same that you’ll probably find tonight in a crazy Afrika-by-night style. Those who were out yesterday are still recovering…First thing they’ll probably do is switch the radio on at the right tune: 88.1fm as early (!) as 10am.

The radio’s vocation is an academic one as well as a local one. It is owned by the university. In France, there are two types of radio stations, commercial and non commercial, most of the local radios being of the second type. interTropic started some 6 years ago, establishing a deal for the right to broadcast on Saturdays with Radio Campus Bordeaux. It is a grassroots organisation dedicated to ‘defending our cultures,’ and the radio programmes showcase all of the organisation’s activities. Though our afrikan presence in this town is old and important, there is no real/proper/dynamic community life with most of us being students. We do not have a radio station of our own. Some programmes are on a few non commercial stations of the town and interTropic only broadcasts a full day weekly.

Rafael Lucas, Haitian scholar, polyglot, convinced pan-africanist and university teacher in Bordeaux, is the founder of interTropic. The eleven programmes that make up interTropic are broadcast in French, alongside Creole, Pular and Portuguese, and operated by some seventeen volunteers. The programmes dedicated to geographical areas are Espace Pacifique, mainly about Tahiti and the others islands of the Pacific Ocean. Espace Lusophone, broadcast in Portuguese, introduces the cultures of Angola, Guinée Bissau, Cap Vert, Mozambique and Brazil.

The Ambyans Karaib crew has got some good Gwada (Gwadloup) and Madinina ( Martinique) vibes, mostly musical: dancehall, ragga, zouk, some compas and African music for dance floors. They have live interviews of artists and promote musical shows. The Diamanka family takes us to the Cultures Peules, from Senegal to Yemen, via Egypt. A brief review of the news precedes Mizik Lakay which is dedicated to Ayiti music and news (as I write I can’t help the skah-shah sound echoing in me). DJ Allthetime, interTropic’s programmer, knows how to do it: changement!

The others shows are not really dedicated to a particular geographical area. Panorama is a mix of local news and good lively music, and there is generally a guest who advertises an event. Tombié/Graines de Parole, takes the floor for its weekly debate over a social issue. We have Tempo which does a well researched musical African world tour and has some programmes focused on the Indian Ocean. The African vibe brings the hip hop to the massive.

My interTropic show, Art et culture, speaks the voice of those who find it hard to put/locate themselves on the map. Whether it a geographical matter or… something else that is believed to lie beyond easy category, I use my show to dig and find out what have we have left when we cannot really rely on Mama Africa anymore. afriKan voices, modern voices, (this modern IS an issue), afriKan consciences, AfriKan consciousness, Art et culture tells the story of the African Diaspora. Victory, survival, beauty, pain…simply life, of Africa mainly through art and culture (the name of the program), wherever she is- globalafrican style, interTropic style, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, via the Americas, the continent, not to forget the cultural forms we have developed in Bordeaux. One of my guest voices, Jamaican scholar Barrington Chevannes, told me that the Caribbean is the place where Africa struggled with Europe but remained Africa. This is the kind of story we like to tell.