A prophet is an intermediary between a deity and the earthbound. Prophetic pronouncements are revelations. Revelations that report on the future are, rightly speaking, prophecies.

Imagine our surprise to learn that secular France is chock-a-block with prophets huddled up in the film and recording studios of French low culture.

FRENCH RAPPERS' PROPHECIES COME TRUE*

November 16, 2005 (BBC) - Today many French rappers are saying that if only their words had been listened to, the suburban violence might never have occurred.

"Instead of sleeping in the national assembly, government ministers should have listened to our albums. It's the youth of France talking," said Rim-K of 113.

Hhmmm. Think so?

Take these lines from the song In Front Of The Police, by the group 113:

"There had better not be a police blunder, or the town will go up / The city's a time-bomb / From the police chief to the guy on the street - they're all hated."

Or this from Don't Try To Understand, by Fonky Family:

"The state is screwing us / Well you know, we are going to defend ourselves / Don't try to understand."

Or this - uncannily accurate - from Alpha 5.20:

"Clichy-sous-Bois, it's gangsta gangsta / And Aulnay-sous-Bois, it's gangsta gangsta."

In Brigitte - Cop's Wife** [Brigitte (femme de flic)], Ministere A.M.E.R indulges in a pornographic fantasy which will not be to most tastes. ... And the rapper Monsieur R - whose real name is Richard Makela - was criticised for a recent song called FranSSe, in which he described France as a "chick [une garce, a bitchy girl] ... treat her like a whore!"† [vid., infra]

Yes. Plenty there to base some national policy on.

ENTR'ACTE: IF ONLY FRENCH LEADERS LISTENED TO POP CULTURE

November 23, 2005 (IHT) - [Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film, "La Haine" (Hate)] spawned a genre known as "banlieue movies" that explored the problems of children of Arab and African immigrants and effectively announced the birth of a new "lost generation." ... Why did these movies not ring alarm bells

Perhaps -- and we are only guessing here -- because these movies are exploitive, sophmoric, and crude, because they lack convincing force, because the intent of the vast majority of them is not to ring alarm bells but to paint up banlieue fantasies of crime and taking it to the man. Governments, as a rule, do not formulate "social cohesion" policies on line for the pissoir between Saturday matinee double-features.

This month, the left-of-center Paris daily, Libération, had the clever idea of revisiting popular rap songs and then interviewing the artists about their sentiments today. And, as with the banlieue movies, the warning signs were clearly written in some of their lyrics.

As far back as 1991, for instance, a group called NTM [scil., nique ta mère, a French imperative form of the common English Oedipal slur] addressed politicians in one song:

Go visit the banlieues/ Look at young people in their eyes/ You who command from on high/ My appeal is serious, don't take it as a game/ Young people are changing, that's what is worrying.

And, four years later, they rapped:

How long will this last?/ It's been years since everything could explode.

Disiz La Peste, a black rapper, captured this sense of hopelessness just a few months ago in lyrics which ended:

Those who treat me with disdain/ Who make rotten jokes/ Which don't even make sense/ Neither humor nor love/ And France cares little what I do/ Forever in its mind/ I'll just be a young man from the banlieue.

"Is burning cars and schools the solution?" asked Kool Shen of NTM. "Certainly not, but it looks like the only thing that works."

And one more to show that the riot prophets are general throughout France.

IN FRANCE, ANTHEMS OF ALIENATION*
Rappers Were Decrying Officialdom, Slum Life Long Before Riots

MARSEILLE, France November 24, 2005 - "Zone" is French slang for slum and Bring Pressure...heaps all sorts of nastiness on former and current French government officials, including Nicolas Sarkozy, the minister in charge of national security who recently labeled French rioters "scum." [scil., racaille] ... On the disc [Pars Tous Les Moyens nécessaires: G.Ï.Z. (Gouvernement Issu de la Zone)], Skar [Aziz Chamsoudini] pledged to do something vile to Sarkozy's mother and then rapped on:

Propagators of hatred / You want to exclude us. / I do not have anything to lose. / We are going to put pressure. / We're up to make the problems explode.

Yes, the press has discovered the riot prophets, vaticinia ex eventu. They are among us. Actually they are always among us. They are the clichéd anti-authoritarians making clichéd songs and movies about clichéd authority. They need only be plucked from the obscurity of the club circuit by a perspicacious press to be re-invented as prophets.

Asking why the failed policies of successive French governments were not informed by banlieue prophets is simply a stupid question.

If the press thinks artistes are prophetic, we put this question to the press, "Why didn't an alert press pay heed to these banlieue prophets?"

An answer to the first question is, a responsible government does not take its lead from film and recording artistes. At least M. la Peste recognizes this:

In an interview, Disiz, whose real name is Serigne M'Baye, said it is too simplistic to say that French politicians now accused of having ignored the ghettos' problems for decades need only to have listened to rap to learn that the lid was ready blow.

An answer to the second question is, the press, more aware of banlieue culture than its governments, never believed these artistes to be prophets of hard news.

And the answer to both questions is because the banlieue prophets are not prophets. They are filmmakers and rappeurs. They film and rap about what they hope will sell. Sometimes it's the poverty and misery of the banlieue, sometimes killing cops, sometimes gangsters, sometimes doing and sometimes dealing, sometimes hating Jews, sometimes slapping la garce, sometimes rape, murder, or rough love.

Prophets, messengers from the deity, are charged with a very specific brief. They exhort on a single track, not one of twelve. None to our knowledge has ever signed a recording contract, made a music video, or worn a baseball cap turned round. They are not artistes. They are often -- in a little divine snort up the divine sleeve -- the least gifted for their mission. Bad communicators. Inarticulate. Stutterers. Timid.

Art is not vatic. When art takes a stab at depicting the future, it is just a guess, less predictive than a coin toss. A guess is not a prophecy. Matching up yesteryear lyrics to today's news is hindsight, not evidence of prophecy. Prophecy is a specific set of claims about some specific future. We are keen to see what entertainment page prophecies a chastened but newly aware press now reports as hard news. We hope they don't miss these newsworthy lyrics. Just the prophetic ticket for patching up France.

Of course, being a media-annointed prophet is not all headlines and bling-bling.

FRENCH RAPPERS ACCUSED OF INCITING RECENT RIOTS*

PARIS November 23, 2005 (AFP) - Seven French rap outfits could face legal action following a complaint lodged by some 200 lawmakers on Wednesday, accusing them of helping to provoke the country's recent riots through their song lyrics.

"Sexism, racism and anti-Semitism are no more acceptable in song lyrics than in written or spoken words," the deputy behind the initiative, François Grosdidier of the ruling centre-right UMP, told AFP. "This is one of the factors that led to the violence in the suburbs," he said, arguing that rap music "conditions" listeners into a violent frame of mind that can spur them on to action.

In a petition co-signed by 152 deputies and 49 senators, the deputy drew the attention of justice minister Pascal Clement to seven rap singers and bands whom he accuses of inciting racism and hatred.

The complaint singled out the song FranSSe by the rap artist Monsieur R...[AKA] Richard Makela [who] is already facing a separate court case for "outrage to social decency" over the song, brought by another ruling-party deputy. [M. Mach, the other "ruling-party deputy" also has a Proposition de loi, No.2532, before the Assemblée nationale citing M. R's infamous lyrics.]

The complaint also targets the singers Smala, Fabe and Salif and the rap groups Lunatic, 113, and Ministère Amer [sic].

But like many professionals -- squeegee men, politicians, and thieves come to mind -- there is a fraternal bond among hackneyed poets. Accuse one and they all rally up.

DON'T SCAPEGOAT THE RAPPERS: VILLEPIN*

PARIS November 25, 2005 (AFP) - Prime minister Dominique de Villepin warned on Friday against scapegoating French rap musicians for the country's recent riots, after several hundred lawmakers accused rappers of inciting the violence.

"Is rap to blame for the crisis in the suburbs? No," Villepin told French radio RTL, although he said musicians and writers should be responsible for their works.

Dom is the author of Éloge des voleurs de feu, a volume of French poesy, and has contributed three poesies to Urgences de la poésie. He also makes time to run Jack's sugar shack.

* Absolutely no Muslims sighted during the writing of this report.
** Parental advisory: The nice lyrics to Brigitte (la femme de flic).
† Parental advisory: Actually, M. R said more than the delicate BBC could manage: La France est une garce, n'oublie pas de la baiser jusqu'à l'épuiser, comme une salope il faut la traiter, mec ! / je pisse sur Napoléon et le Général de Gaulle... / La France est une mère indigne qui a abandonné ses fils sur le trottoir sans même leur faire un signe...

PFFT (What is this?): Reportorial baloney 5 | Tea leaves in the rap français 0 | Rayonnement français 0