During the evening of the Flames on May 11, the singer Tiakola walked the stage of the Châtelet theater several times. For the trophy of the pop album of the year, for that of the best afro or afro-inspired song, and then, for “Atasanté”, crowned R & B song of the year.
R&B, with rap, afro or hip-hop, get with this evening recognition. However, this musical genre has long been the subject of confusion, misunderstanding, sometimes even contempt. This is explained by Rhoda Tchokokam, artistic director, photographer, critic and author of “Sensitive, a history of French R & B”.
From the Sensitive label to Aya Nakamura
A literary project born of a paradox: “R & B is a sister music to hip-hop, which emerged a few years after it, yet today there are no books on R & B. We talk of forty years of history, the artists are present, they can tell this story, but there is an essential lack”.
From there, Rhoda Tchockokam conducts interviews, meets those who, in the 1990s, launched R & B in France – an edifying chapter on the Sensitive label! – listen to their songs over and over. A generational dive that she recounts in this podcast “Minute Papillon”.
A diluted R&B
With the aim of understanding what R & B lacked to impose itself in the French musical landscape even today. Because if already at the time, R & B struggled to obtain the recognition of rap on the one hand and of the French song “to text” on the other, it has since lost its essence to conform to imposed standards. by labels.
Rhoda Tchokokam confides: “There is a type of R&B, variety R&B, which in my opinion arrived too early. It’s watered down music, emptied of the essential elements of the genre. But it appeals to the French public. So the record companies understand that’s what you have to give. But for the vitality of the genre, for the maturity it didn’t help”.
Seeing no fatality there, the author persists in finding vitality in the genre. “There are still artists who claim an R&B heritage, like Aya Nakamura or Dadju. And then there are also very clearly R&B artists like Enchantée Julia”. An analysis that she concludes, full of optimism: “The scene is not dead and for me it is being reborn, very slowly of course, from its ashes”.
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