Anti-Immigrant Politics and Transformations of the Music Business, 1989–1996

Bibliographic Data

ID23437720
AuthorsJames A Winders (corresponding author)
Year2006
Pages79-104
Publication date2006-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueParis Africain (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/9780230602076_4
OpenAlexW2494469615
ISBN9780230602076
LanguageEN
References cited11

Asked in 1997 to describe the most important differences between the early Mitterrand years (1981–1989) and the unfolding decade of the 1990s for the African music scene in Paris, Hélène Lee (1947–), long a music journalist for Libération as well as for other publications, was as blunt as possible. “It’s very, very simple,” she said forcefully: Under Mitterrand, we had money. There was money for the music and visas for the musicians. Now, there are no more visas for the musicians and no more money for the music. That’s all. 1 Certainly exaggerated for effect, Lee’s assessment nevertheless seems accurate in terms of degree, as a means of contrasting what the two periods were like for a great many African musicians. For us to accept this characterization, we need first to ask what changed in French culture in order for the situation of immigrant musicians to be so much worse only a few years after the seeming high point of 1989. Not surprisingly, the answer has to do with much more than changes in the music business, although there certainly were some decisive changes there. For complicated reasons, as we shall see, the early 1990s marked the end of the apparent divergence between French attitudes toward the North African immigrant population and attitudes toward black African immigrants from south of the Sahara. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Art · Divergence (linguistics) · Economic history · Economics · Immigration · Literature · Order (exchange) · Political science · Politics · Popular music · Population · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law · North African History and Literature · Philosophy

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