December 10, 2024 • 32 mins
On the last leg of the Afropean Podcast’s journey, Johny arrives in the city of romance, Paris France, home to Europe’s largest Black population outside of London. He links up with neo-soul legends Hélène and Célia Foussart (Les Nubians) to talk about Black empowerment through music, follows the route of Black History walking tour to learn about the whitewashing of French heroes with Black heritage such as author of The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, and pays a visit to academic Olivette Otele, who breaks down why its a problem to refuse to acknowledge Black citizens who aren’t deemed ‘exceptional’.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Afropean Podcast.
Podcast.
Welcome to the Afropean Podcast, a newseries traversing the Afro European
diaspora, sharing the voices of peoplewhose identities and experiences
(00:25):
shed light on a Europe, often missingfrom official national narratives
and pocket size tourist guides.
We aim to explore what it meansto be at once African and European
in a Europe that is culturallyand politically redefining itself.
I'm Johny Pitts and in thisfinal episode, we're in Paris.
(00:48):
Those French values of liberty, equalityand fraternity are beliefs held deeply
at the heart of the French constitution.
But does this really match theexperience of people of African
descent living in France today?
Outside of London, where I'm currentlybased, Paris has the largest black
(01:10):
presence in Europe, with people comingfrom all over France as former colonies.
Now overseas territories, or asthey're known in France, Les Domptons.
It's also long been a refugefor African Americans from
Josephine Baker to James Baldwin.
When William Wells Brown, the Americannovelist, climbed the steps of the
Arc de Triomphe in 1849, he describedhow you could look out on a city where
(01:34):
you're finally free, even from bountyhunters and fugitive slave laws.
This link with the US can perhapsbe seen in the 20th century in the
international renown of French hip hop,which after the States is one of the
genre's biggest selling territories.
Through the music of legends like IAm and MC Solaar, it's paved the way
(01:54):
for creating a connective culturefor the black community in France.
And this music has, for Afropeans,been a place of Resistance and hope.
But hip hop, of course, isn't the onlyexpression of black culture and identity.
I wanted to talk to someof my Afro pean heroes.
They're such heroes to me,actually, that I named my
(02:15):
daughter Célia after one of them.
Musical duo Les Nubians consists ofHélène Faussart and Célia Faussart.
They were born in Paris.
Then in 1985, the sisters movedwith their parents to Chad.
Seven years later, they returnedto Bordeaux and began singing
a cappella, producing poetryslams in Bordeaux and Paris.
And singing background vocalsfor various artists worldwide.
(02:46):
In 1998, the same year that the Frenchfootball team dominated by players of
African descent like Zinedine Zidane,and Thierry Henry on the World Cup
in Paris, Les Nubians released theirfirst album, Princesses Nubiennes
(03:11):
AKA Golden.
Salut, c'est Celia de Nubians, a.
k.
a.
Blu Nefertiti, et bienvenueau Afropean Podcast.
Yes!
On veut nous faire croire à des mythesperdus Des passages de l'histoire
falsifiés et revus De Ramses à Mandela
(03:38):
I still love the trackMakeda from that album.
The title is another name for the Queen ofSheba, who with the biblical King Solomon
bore a son, and are said to be ancientancestors of Haile Selassie, can be found
in ancient Coptic texts that show Ethiopiaas one of the cornerstones of Christendom.
The Nubians use their art to tellstories I never heard about in school.
(04:03):
You started making music in Franceand then you've traveled all over the
world and we're speaking to you now,you're coming in from Guadeloupe.
So I'd just, yeah, I'd like to go back tothe beginning of where it really began.
It began in Paris where,um, our parents met first.
Paris being like this city where,um, yeah, Cameroonian, uh, students
(04:24):
were definitely, um, going, um, afterdecolonization and, and dad being this
French man, you know, living in France.
So I would say that Paris is definitelythe place where everything started,
where their reality collided.
Um, and when they decided to, um.
to, uh, break the rules and beingthis amazing, like, biracial
(04:48):
couple that generated us.
Uh, we started singing together.
We were living together in Bordeaux.
And a friend kept on cominghome and saying, People need
to listen to your voices.
You need to be out there.
That's how we started the band.
When we got back from Africa tolive in France, um, I was really
(05:12):
hurt by the fact that peopledidn't know anything about Africa.
People were very much, uh, dismissive.
They were ignorant.
We really have to talk about our culture.
And yeah, talking about Nubiawas a way to talk about history
and to go far in history.
To revisit what is our Black culture,what is our African culture, the origins.
(05:35):
Talking about Nubia was also a way toempower all Black people in the world,
um, considering ourselves as Nubians.
One people and no more asAfrican American, Afropean.
It was like a, this gathering flag.
Also to tell stories because Nubia wasvery well known for the beauty of Nubia.
(05:59):
princesses.
And, um, we wanted to, to also,yeah, celebrate femininity and, uh,
and, and celebrate African culture.
The time we came out,there was world music.
There was in France, there wasrap too, but there was no soul
or R& B category or whatever.
(06:19):
And we didn't want tofit in any of the boxes.
That's how we came up with that.
Afropean sound, Afropean soul, becausewe were trying to define ourselves and
world music was not what we were doing.
Rap was not exactly what we were doing.
What's that sound we want to make?
And we started thinking about artiststhat was already out on the scene.
(06:44):
People like Omar, Shade or Seal.
They're making pop, butit's not really pop.
They're bringing some sounds andrhythms and colors that we were like,
I'm sure it's because they're African.
Because we were listening to, um,club music from the continent when we
were, when we were going party, likeSukuz and Makosa and all those sounds.
(07:07):
that were in the nightclubs, that weremodern, and that were not world music.
We want to do something that is a littlelike sophisticated but soulful and with
some beats and some activist reggaemessages and we're like afropean yeah
afropean soul because soul it's from mysoul to your soul it's It's for our souls.
(07:41):
The track you're hearing now isthe Roots Remix of Taboo, the
Nubians cover of that shady Classic.
To me, it's a beautiful example ofthe power of diasporic collaboration.
Comme une tempête, elleenvahit mon corps, mon air.
(08:03):
C'est un mystère qui rend fou.
I was like 15, 14, 15.
I remember being in Chad and, um,Asking my dad about identity, asking
my dad about, you know, being mixed.
And I was already wondering on howI'm going to project myself in the
(08:24):
world, how my trajectory and myexperience would make me different.
And I remember my dad, the white man,My dad saying, when people will look at
you, they will always see a black woman.
And as soon as you will open your mouth,they will realize how French you are.
And that was somethingthat really hit me deep.
(08:46):
And I was like, wow.
And I was already like wonderingabout the black identity, African
American versus African versus peoplefrom the Caribbean, Les Antilles.
And what was our characteristic?
And I was like, wow, we're listeningto all these different music.
It's really peculiar and it'sreally special that we are in Paris.
(09:09):
We are in the middle ofall these Black cultures.
Plus being in Europe,that make us Afropean.
It's important for us to defineourselves before anyone else does.
And for me, there was a truth, my identityresonating in this word, Afropean.
You guys moved to the States.
(09:30):
I wanted to ask what the receptionwas like to your music when it was
released in France, because from myrecollection, it was kind of not a
huge response actually within France.
Whereas it seemed like your album,your first album became a real
cult classic elsewhere, but itdidn't seem like it caught fire in
France when it was first released.
Yes, we were not the people theyexpected to see and to speak to.
(09:55):
When you start talking about black inFrench saying Noir, the word Noir, they
bug because they're used to say black.
Black is cool, you know.
and you say, yes, they wantto use the English Word.
And we were like, we speak French.
Can we say no?
Or when you say about music, no,black music, they're embarrassed.
(10:21):
Journalists are embarrassed.
They don't know.
How to take you, they ask you,can you speak about the hood?
And you're like, not really.
You don't really fit in the boxthat they're expecting you to be in.
Also, it was the year wherethe France won the World Cup.
You know, the album got blurredby the football success.
(10:44):
And at the same time, America grabbed thealbum and started playing it and loving
it and in the reception of our music Itwas more understood there than In our
own country in our own language for usthe world music was this well that we
(11:04):
could like go and grab and and, and feedour, our imagination with, so we can
create something different, somethingthat was definitely more adapted to
what we were living, which, which was acity life, and, and being close to our,
uh, brothers and sisters doing hip hop.
(11:30):
Les
Nubians are a real inspiration, andthe music they make help to shine
a light on the notion of a Blackidentity in France across the world.
But what Celia says about thisdifficulty in the French language of
the distinction between the word Black.
(11:50):
and noir is often a stumbling block whenit comes to addressing race in France.
And then there is the word Negre,which when it's translated into
English is a bit like saying theoutdated and offensive word Negro.
In the 1930s, black intellectualsAimé César, Leopold Senghor and
Léon Damas founded the Negritudemovement in Paris, in which they
(12:11):
argued for the importance of PanAfricanism across the African diaspora.
They took the word Negre as their own,reclaiming from the pejorative sense with
which it had, up until then, been used.
Um, Uh, Au bout d'une trente trois.
But the negative use of thisword in France still persists.
Pour une fois, je me suis misà travailler comme un nègre.
(12:32):
Je sais pas si j'étais nègre.
In an interview in 2010, Jean PaulGallant, the perfumist, caused
outrage when he casually used theterm on French national television,
saying that he worked like a negro.
I got in touch with Kévin Donat,someone who's contributed to Afropean.
(12:53):
com in the past, And he's a tour guideoffering black history tours of Paris.
Who gets to say the N word inFrance, it's not a problem.
Yeah.
So, so there was Guerlain, hewas on national TV and, uh, some
journalists asked him, how didyou create this amazing perfume?
And he said, yes.
I was a young man and I fell inlove with that woman and I wanted
(13:17):
to create something special for her.
So I asked her, what areyour favorite flowers?
And so on.
And then when I got all the information,I started to work like a Negra.
If Negra ever worked in history,anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that was just like,just a little cheap shot.
I don't know a billion of black people.
And then carry on to, to whathe was talking about perfume.
(13:40):
And we're like, what was that?
I am Kevin Dona.
I'm originally from Martiniquein the French Caribbean.
I moved to mainlandFrance about 15 years ago.
I became a tour guideexactly 10 years ago.
I was doing very traditional mainstreamwalking tours, but I wanted to have
(14:01):
something more personal, a bit deeper.
I had the idea of the Toursof the Black History of Paris.
I was a young black man livingin the middle of Paris, asking
myself a lot of questions.
Do I belong in here?
What am I doing here?
Am I legit to be their Parisian guide?
In the 1970s, 1980s, there were lotsof immigrations, uh, from Africa, from
(14:27):
the Caribbean to, to mainland France.
And once again, thisdivide became relevant.
Like, oh, I'm from Martinique.
Martinique is a French department.
Why would you treat me like animmigrant from Senegal, for instance?
In a way, blackness iscoming back in France.
They have this sort ofParisian black people.
where they're listening to the same music,reading the same books, and having the
(14:51):
same material experience in the world.
At the time, it was theGreat War for Democracy.
We travelled, we wereaccepted in France, etc.
I never had The work Kevi is doing isessential, telling a story of Paris that,
even in the City of Lights, is invisibleto the steady stream of tourists who
come sightseeing throughout the year.
(15:12):
While talking to Kevi, this issueof inherent racism embedded in the
language came up in an interview.
In a surprising way, rather fittingly inthe form of one of France's most famous
writers who wrote The Three Musketeersand The Count of Monte Cristo, and who
most people don't even know is black.
Alexandre Dumas, the author ofThe Three Musketeers and Monte
Cristo, very interesting if youwant to talk about racial ambiguity.
(15:37):
Who is in which category?
Uh, his grandmother was an enslavedwoman from, from Haiti back then
when it was a French colony.
And he's the son of the firstblack or first mixed race general
of the, of the French army.
So Dumas, one who representshim nowadays, 21st century, a
(15:58):
hundred percent whitewashed.
10 years ago there was a movie and itwas Gérard Depardieu with a curly nappy
wig who was playing Alexandre Dumas.
There was something interestingabout Dumas is like many famous
authors, he would hire ghost writersbecause he was writing a lot.
(16:18):
And at the time you had to publishyour novels, but chapter after
chapter in a, in a newspaper, right?
So you have to write all the time.
So sometimes Dumas who had a very busy,exciting life was behind schedule.
So he was hiring a guy.
To do some part of the work for him.
And in English, you callthat a ghostwriter in French.
(16:39):
We call it a nigger.
So when I'm doing my tour inEnglish, especially with Americans,
and they're like, why do youuse the N word for ghostwriter?
And it's because a ghostwriterand a nigger are the same.
It's a person who doesn'tget credit for their work.
And that was the official word.
In French to say ghostwriter until 2018.
(17:03):
So it shows you a world that iscompletely different when it comes to
political correctness, for instance,
I have to choose for now.
And the most popular oneis the left bank tour.
And it's between the Latin quarter andcenter main on the left bank of Paris.
So very beautiful area.
(17:23):
Lots of intellectuals and artists livethere over hundreds and hundreds of years.
And when I tell people my maintour takes place in this area,
people do not understand.
Their first reaction is,what are you talking about?
It's a rich intellectual neighborhood.
Why would you do a tourof black history there?
(17:43):
Some of the first people who claimed ablack identity in France were students.
And it's the student neighborhoodwith universities such as
La Sorbonne for instance.
So this tour starts from the Pantheon.
Which is a very special monument in Paris.
My favorite one, if you askme, uh, from an architectural
point of view, it's beautiful.
(18:04):
In the 1700s, when they builtit, they were inspired by St.
Paul Church in Londonwith a beautiful dome.
So they have a sort ofreplica of that dome.
The monument initially was supposedto be a Catholic church named St.
Genevieve, representing aspecial relationship between the.
(18:25):
French royal family andthe Catholic church.
Right?
So that was the 1760s.
So the King of France himself came andput the first stone to build the church,
but it took them 30 years to build it.
And when they finished thechurch, it was a revolution.
It's the 1790s.
People are not that excitedin the royal family anymore.
(18:46):
So they decided to transform, to subvertthe church and they made it a Pantheon.
Pantheon in Greek means for all thegods, and they had one, one mission.
It was to honor the great heroes orthe people who inspired the revolution.
So that's the 1790s.
That is the beginning of,of, of the, of the monument.
(19:08):
But this monument right now, wecall it a Republican monument.
Republican in the way, not leftor right, but it's related to
the history of the republic.
So if you want to go in there, if youwant to be accepted one day in the
pantheon, well, first you have to be dead.
But then you have to berelated to the history of the
(19:28):
revolutions and the republics.
It's not your family.
It's not because you're an aristocrat.
It's because you're a hero.
And it's one of the few monuments in Pariswhere you will hear about colonization,
decolonization, slavery, the abolition ofslavery, because abolitionists are there.
Aimé Césaire, a great poet and politicianfrom Martinique, he died in 2008.
(19:50):
In 2011, he was accepted in the Pantheon.
For a couple of weeks, therewere huge portraits of his face.
People would ask me one question, whois this African American over there?
Pointing at images, and I would go nuts.
Kevi is doing the importantwork of reinstating the black
(20:11):
community into the topography ofthe city, one tourist at a time.
But it's also crucial that wego beyond highlighting the black
success stories who rose beyondtheir station, shone brilliantly
enough for the white establishment toturn their heads and pay attention.
We shouldn't only hear aboutthese exceptional cases.
I got in touch with Olivette Otele,a Parisian academic working at
(20:34):
SOAS University of London, whoseresearch and recent book, African
Europeans, addresses this very issue.
Are people aware of this history?
Um, you know, I know that thereare many statues that, um, that
show some of the great, uh, blackmilitary heroes, for instance.
But, you know, is there awarenessof, of this really long history
(20:55):
of the black presence in France?
No, no.
What, what people, most people are awareof is 20th century, 20th century heroes.
Um, Dumas, of course, but20th century mostly Senghor.
You know, the father of lanegritude and all the rest of it.
What is interesting is that recently,I think a couple of months ago,
uh, President Macron said that he,he needed a list of exceptional
(21:18):
people that, uh, and we can thinkabout status for those exceptional.
And most people just rebelled,saying, well, the exceptional put
them on the pedestal, obviously.
What about those who actuallyfought to get those exceptional
there on that pedestal?
What about them?
And some stories are justincredibly, um, dense and, uh,
(21:38):
not taught at all in France.
And, and that's, youknow, that's strategy.
I know it's very convenient,really, to have the exceptional one.
And quite often, in terms ofarchival material, we do have
information about the exceptional onebecause he or she was exceptional.
And therefore, we have very littleunderstanding of ordinary people who
(21:58):
went on about their lives and, Butyou know, they, they, they were the
powerhouse behind all these storiesthat they were the ones who contributed.
And for me, I, I see exceptionalism assomething double edged, uh, sword, because
we want to know about these things.
They're all models.
But then they don't necessarily teachus about the others, ones that are,
(22:22):
you know, who built many nations.
And even with someone like Dumas,even, even in his, his own heritage,
you can keep going back and keepgoing back to find out who his
ancestors were, which sort of tells adifferent story as well, doesn't it?
Yes, it does.
And I, I really like the idea thatThroughout the century you have people
crossing European histories and Africanhistories, but you also have these giving
(22:48):
us an insight into what society was like.
And that's the only way we canhave a glimpse of those voices
that are not necessarily there.
You know, they're glimpses, butthey tell you a lot about the
different kind of narratives.
You have the colonial narrative and youhave people of African descent narratives.
And of course, the experience isdifferent, but at so many levels and
(23:10):
how you have to, some of them had tocompose with the system and actually
Except being seen as the exceptionaland in terms of modern day France.
Do you find that there is a formulationof blackness that manages to hold together
people from the Caribbean from Africafrom from West Africa from North Africa?
(23:34):
Does blackness work like that in France?
So would you say say something different?
It's very different.
It's a bit.
It's again, um, The divide and rule.
It means that people from Dumtum,which is, um, territories, uh, for
example, the Caribbean, they're French.
People of African descent, Senegaleseand all, and all that, their parents,
for example, if they came in 1970,they were not French anymore.
(23:56):
There are degrees of Frenchnessthat don't really help.
Bring together the idea of blackness.
And this is incredibly sad becausebetween the walls, you had African
students, Caribbean students workingtogether to end colonization.
And they were, they were completelyin sync in working together.
Modern day France, at leastwhen I was growing up was very
(24:17):
much, you know, fragmented.
There are those who aremore French than the others.
Younger generation, the onesthat I taught when I was
teaching Paris 13 for six years.
Um, and it was located inthe project, that university.
They're completely in sync.
I mean, you're going to say, I'mMartinique, I'm from Martinique,
I'm from Guadeloupe and all that.
(24:38):
They were born in, inthere, in, in the banlieue.
Uh, they claim in the space oftheir parents or grandparents.
Um, and their, their understanding ofblackness, they wouldn't formulate it
as blackness, but their understandingis that we're all in this together.
So.
It's, it's incredibly vibrant and, um,I loved every second of it because it
(25:02):
was, they were teaching me that you canreach a level where you're going to be
able to put these aside and actuallywork to, to fight the oppressor.
(25:22):
When people are asking me questions like,why are there so many black people here?
I was not really blaming them.
I was blaming also Frenchculture a little bit.
to show anything about its blackhistory, its black presence.
So when I started doing the tours,immediately, I got some media attention.
(25:45):
What I mean is there were journalistsasking me questions about the tours.
It was both positive and negative.
This is amazing.
There's this young black man doingthese tours that are very different.
We've never really thoughtabout Paris this way.
And on the other side, there is afear for separatism or tribalism.
(26:07):
As you would say in French, wecall it communautarisme, like
a sort of French nightmare.
of minorities being isolated fromthe mainstream and doing their
own, their own things together.
And from a French point of view,we're all together all the time.
And it's beautiful.
That sounds very nice, but, um,uh, it's not working so well.
(26:29):
So can we talk about that?
Today, many of the city's blackpopulation can be found in the
banlieue, the French word for suburb.
Some say that bon lieu comesfrom the words bonissement,
banishment and lieu, place.
In the early 19th century, Paris wasa city rampant with crime and disease
(26:54):
and so, funded largely by colonialriches from Africa, Napoleon III decided
to clear the slums, commissioningcity planner Georges Eugène Haussmann
to create a new Paris with bettersewage systems and wider streets that
could be patrolled and controlledto replace the shady, revolution
friendly labyrinth the city had become.
(27:15):
Aside from the newer streets being easierto police, the poor and unwanted were
also driven further out of the centre ofParis because of the higher rents these
new, luxurious townhouses commanded.
It was the era that gave birth to theParis the world knows and loves, but
today, beyond the periphery, the banishedones still reside, now often immigrants
(27:36):
from West and North Africa, as well asRoma travelling communities, who are
cut off from the centre of the city.
This idea of commune tourism that Kevimentioned and which the French are so
eager to hold at bay, when coupled withtheir trenchant belief in laicite, which
in English we might call secularism,the separation of church and state,
means that these communities areoften at odds with the French system.
(28:11):
There's a scene in the cult Frenchfilm La Haine, where DJ Cutkiller
starts blasting out a mashup ofEdith Piaf and KRS One's Sound of the
Police from a window in a tower block.
Makes me wonder, isn't there space forthat beautiful multiculturalism, that
radical spirit of hope and resistancewhich Black Europe knows so much about,
to influence and challenge traditionalEuropean norms without such strong
(28:35):
kickback from the establishment?
I asked Helen and Celia aboutthis idea of communitarism.
France is not a country thatis celebrating communities.
In France, they are trying theirbest to let us believe that we're
all brothers and sisters, on the samelevel, equal, and there is this thing
that is about laïcité, la laïcité.
(28:57):
In the name of this, France is not thatmuch celebrating their communities.
I think it's sad that, uh,the Black cultures that are
related to France cannot claim.
being like, well, you know,this is representative of, of
us and, and us in this country.
We don't have that.
(29:18):
I still think that Paris is a stronghub, uh, for the African, uh, diaspora
and especially for the Afropeans.
It's still shining on, uh, allthose, um, aesthetic proposition.
I'm thinking about also visualartists like, uh, Beyagil, Ngacha,
or, uh, people like Alexi Peskin.
(29:39):
All those people that, when I'm throughoutthe world or whatever, and I see their
work, I see that they're doing exhibitshere and there, I'm like, yeah, yeah,
that's my people, that's my people.
It's, it's dope.
Through writing Afropean and recordingthis series, I've seen that the growth
of black intellectual and creativetalent in Europe is everywhere, and
(30:01):
that there are people across thecontinent fighting for its recognition.
But all too often, this is held backby European countries setting up
boundaries to safeguard their culture,rather than embrace the multiculturalism
that has always been present.
Something that Olivette Otele saidin our interview got me thinking, if
Europe doesn't fully acknowledge thestructural injustices inherent in its
(30:23):
colonial history and the complicatedresultant legacy, how can we move on?
It's, it's the colonial mentality that'sstill there that Bob Marley talks about.
It's, it's, it's so pervasive.
The problem is that it's being taught.
It hasn't been challenged and childrenare learning about the, the colonies,
(30:44):
but it's in a way that seemed topresent the story as a finished story.
It's, it's not finished.
The legacies of the past are still thereand for many people very much present.
The
answer for me lies in the collaboration,optimism, resilience, and persistence
(31:04):
of the communities and individuals I'vetalked to who through creativity and
activism in the face of this Ugly History,which like the many headed Hydra keeps
returning, are starting conversations,filling in the gaps in this process
of historical erasure, and definingthemselves in a Europe that at this
present time so desperately needs them.
(31:25):
The Afropian Podcast is a coproduction brought to you by
Afropian and Reduce Listening.
It's written and presented by me,Johny Pitts, and was produced by Femi
Oriogun Williams, with productionsupport from Charlie Towler.
Thank you to National Geographicwho supported this series.
This
is the final episode of the season.
(31:47):
Don't forget you can read more storiesfrom Black Europe in my book, Afropean
Notes from Black Europe, which is outnow published by Penguin in the UK and
translated into French, Spanish, Italian,German, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese.
Afropean, the journal, a photographicessay bringing together 20 years
of images and ephemera from mywork is out now published by Morel.
(32:09):
And you can listen back tothe other five episodes on
Brussels, Amsterdam and London.
Berlin, Stockholm, and Lisbon,wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you have any ideas about whereyou'd like us to go for season two, then
there are so many cities encoded withAfropean stories, we'd love to visit.
London, Rome, Madrid, Marseille, notto mention so much of Eastern Europe.
(32:30):
It's more important thanever to tell these stories.
So if you've got any requests or ideas,do get in touch with us through the
website I run with Ayomi Bazoue, NatalouMin, Nina Kamara, and Tola Ositelou.
Afro pean.
com.
Afropean Podcast.
Podcast.
Welcome to the Afropean Podcast, a newseries traversing the Afro European
diaspora, sharing the voices of peoplewhose identities and experiences
(00:25):
shed light on a Europe, often missingfrom official national narratives
and pocket size tourist guides.
We aim to explore what it meansto be at once African and European
in a Europe that is culturallyand politically redefining itself.
I'm Johny Pitts and in thisfinal episode, we're in Paris.
(00:48):
Those French values of liberty, equalityand fraternity are beliefs held deeply
at the heart of the French constitution.
But does this really match theexperience of people of African
descent living in France today?
Outside of London, where I'm currentlybased, Paris has the largest black
(01:10):
presence in Europe, with people comingfrom all over France as former colonies.
Now overseas territories, or asthey're known in France, Les Domptons.
It's also long been a refugefor African Americans from
Josephine Baker to James Baldwin.
When William Wells Brown, the Americannovelist, climbed the steps of the
Arc de Triomphe in 1849, he describedhow you could look out on a city where
(01:34):
you're finally free, even from bountyhunters and fugitive slave laws.
This link with the US can perhapsbe seen in the 20th century in the
international renown of French hip hop,which after the States is one of the
genre's biggest selling territories.
Through the music of legends like IAm and MC Solaar, it's paved the way
(01:54):
for creating a connective culturefor the black community in France.
And this music has, for Afropeans,been a place of Resistance and hope.
But hip hop, of course, isn't the onlyexpression of black culture and identity.
I wanted to talk to someof my Afro pean heroes.
They're such heroes to me,actually, that I named my
(02:15):
daughter Célia after one of them.
Musical duo Les Nubians consists ofHélène Faussart and Célia Faussart.
They were born in Paris.
Then in 1985, the sisters movedwith their parents to Chad.
Seven years later, they returnedto Bordeaux and began singing
a cappella, producing poetryslams in Bordeaux and Paris.
And singing background vocalsfor various artists worldwide.
(02:46):
In 1998, the same year that the Frenchfootball team dominated by players of
African descent like Zinedine Zidane,and Thierry Henry on the World Cup
in Paris, Les Nubians released theirfirst album, Princesses Nubiennes
(03:11):
AKA Golden.
Salut, c'est Celia de Nubians, a.
k.
a.
Blu Nefertiti, et bienvenueau Afropean Podcast.
Yes!
On veut nous faire croire à des mythesperdus Des passages de l'histoire
falsifiés et revus De Ramses à Mandela
(03:38):
I still love the trackMakeda from that album.
The title is another name for the Queen ofSheba, who with the biblical King Solomon
bore a son, and are said to be ancientancestors of Haile Selassie, can be found
in ancient Coptic texts that show Ethiopiaas one of the cornerstones of Christendom.
The Nubians use their art to tellstories I never heard about in school.
(04:03):
You started making music in Franceand then you've traveled all over the
world and we're speaking to you now,you're coming in from Guadeloupe.
So I'd just, yeah, I'd like to go back tothe beginning of where it really began.
It began in Paris where,um, our parents met first.
Paris being like this city where,um, yeah, Cameroonian, uh, students
(04:24):
were definitely, um, going, um, afterdecolonization and, and dad being this
French man, you know, living in France.
So I would say that Paris is definitelythe place where everything started,
where their reality collided.
Um, and when they decided to, um.
to, uh, break the rules and beingthis amazing, like, biracial
(04:48):
couple that generated us.
Uh, we started singing together.
We were living together in Bordeaux.
And a friend kept on cominghome and saying, People need
to listen to your voices.
You need to be out there.
That's how we started the band.
When we got back from Africa tolive in France, um, I was really
(05:12):
hurt by the fact that peopledidn't know anything about Africa.
People were very much, uh, dismissive.
They were ignorant.
We really have to talk about our culture.
And yeah, talking about Nubiawas a way to talk about history
and to go far in history.
To revisit what is our Black culture,what is our African culture, the origins.
(05:35):
Talking about Nubia was also a way toempower all Black people in the world,
um, considering ourselves as Nubians.
One people and no more asAfrican American, Afropean.
It was like a, this gathering flag.
Also to tell stories because Nubia wasvery well known for the beauty of Nubia.
(05:59):
princesses.
And, um, we wanted to, to also,yeah, celebrate femininity and, uh,
and, and celebrate African culture.
The time we came out,there was world music.
There was in France, there wasrap too, but there was no soul
or R& B category or whatever.
(06:19):
And we didn't want tofit in any of the boxes.
That's how we came up with that.
Afropean sound, Afropean soul, becausewe were trying to define ourselves and
world music was not what we were doing.
Rap was not exactly what we were doing.
What's that sound we want to make?
And we started thinking about artiststhat was already out on the scene.
(06:44):
People like Omar, Shade or Seal.
They're making pop, butit's not really pop.
They're bringing some sounds andrhythms and colors that we were like,
I'm sure it's because they're African.
Because we were listening to, um,club music from the continent when we
were, when we were going party, likeSukuz and Makosa and all those sounds.
(07:07):
that were in the nightclubs, that weremodern, and that were not world music.
We want to do something that is a littlelike sophisticated but soulful and with
some beats and some activist reggaemessages and we're like afropean yeah
afropean soul because soul it's from mysoul to your soul it's It's for our souls.
(07:41):
The track you're hearing now isthe Roots Remix of Taboo, the
Nubians cover of that shady Classic.
To me, it's a beautiful example ofthe power of diasporic collaboration.
Comme une tempête, elleenvahit mon corps, mon air.
(08:03):
C'est un mystère qui rend fou.
I was like 15, 14, 15.
I remember being in Chad and, um,Asking my dad about identity, asking
my dad about, you know, being mixed.
And I was already wondering on howI'm going to project myself in the
(08:24):
world, how my trajectory and myexperience would make me different.
And I remember my dad, the white man,My dad saying, when people will look at
you, they will always see a black woman.
And as soon as you will open your mouth,they will realize how French you are.
And that was somethingthat really hit me deep.
(08:46):
And I was like, wow.
And I was already like wonderingabout the black identity, African
American versus African versus peoplefrom the Caribbean, Les Antilles.
And what was our characteristic?
And I was like, wow, we're listeningto all these different music.
It's really peculiar and it'sreally special that we are in Paris.
(09:09):
We are in the middle ofall these Black cultures.
Plus being in Europe,that make us Afropean.
It's important for us to defineourselves before anyone else does.
And for me, there was a truth, my identityresonating in this word, Afropean.
You guys moved to the States.
(09:30):
I wanted to ask what the receptionwas like to your music when it was
released in France, because from myrecollection, it was kind of not a
huge response actually within France.
Whereas it seemed like your album,your first album became a real
cult classic elsewhere, but itdidn't seem like it caught fire in
France when it was first released.
Yes, we were not the people theyexpected to see and to speak to.
(09:55):
When you start talking about black inFrench saying Noir, the word Noir, they
bug because they're used to say black.
Black is cool, you know.
and you say, yes, they wantto use the English Word.
And we were like, we speak French.
Can we say no?
Or when you say about music, no,black music, they're embarrassed.
(10:21):
Journalists are embarrassed.
They don't know.
How to take you, they ask you,can you speak about the hood?
And you're like, not really.
You don't really fit in the boxthat they're expecting you to be in.
Also, it was the year wherethe France won the World Cup.
You know, the album got blurredby the football success.
(10:44):
And at the same time, America grabbed thealbum and started playing it and loving
it and in the reception of our music Itwas more understood there than In our
own country in our own language for usthe world music was this well that we
(11:04):
could like go and grab and and, and feedour, our imagination with, so we can
create something different, somethingthat was definitely more adapted to
what we were living, which, which was acity life, and, and being close to our,
uh, brothers and sisters doing hip hop.
(11:30):
Les
Nubians are a real inspiration, andthe music they make help to shine
a light on the notion of a Blackidentity in France across the world.
But what Celia says about thisdifficulty in the French language of
the distinction between the word Black.
(11:50):
and noir is often a stumbling block whenit comes to addressing race in France.
And then there is the word Negre,which when it's translated into
English is a bit like saying theoutdated and offensive word Negro.
In the 1930s, black intellectualsAimé César, Leopold Senghor and
Léon Damas founded the Negritudemovement in Paris, in which they
(12:11):
argued for the importance of PanAfricanism across the African diaspora.
They took the word Negre as their own,reclaiming from the pejorative sense with
which it had, up until then, been used.
Um, Uh, Au bout d'une trente trois.
But the negative use of thisword in France still persists.
Pour une fois, je me suis misà travailler comme un nègre.
(12:32):
Je sais pas si j'étais nègre.
In an interview in 2010, Jean PaulGallant, the perfumist, caused
outrage when he casually used theterm on French national television,
saying that he worked like a negro.
I got in touch with Kévin Donat,someone who's contributed to Afropean.
(12:53):
com in the past, And he's a tour guideoffering black history tours of Paris.
Who gets to say the N word inFrance, it's not a problem.
Yeah.
So, so there was Guerlain, hewas on national TV and, uh, some
journalists asked him, how didyou create this amazing perfume?
And he said, yes.
I was a young man and I fell inlove with that woman and I wanted
(13:17):
to create something special for her.
So I asked her, what areyour favorite flowers?
And so on.
And then when I got all the information,I started to work like a Negra.
If Negra ever worked in history,anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And that was just like,just a little cheap shot.
I don't know a billion of black people.
And then carry on to, to whathe was talking about perfume.
(13:40):
And we're like, what was that?
I am Kevin Dona.
I'm originally from Martiniquein the French Caribbean.
I moved to mainlandFrance about 15 years ago.
I became a tour guideexactly 10 years ago.
I was doing very traditional mainstreamwalking tours, but I wanted to have
(14:01):
something more personal, a bit deeper.
I had the idea of the Toursof the Black History of Paris.
I was a young black man livingin the middle of Paris, asking
myself a lot of questions.
Do I belong in here?
What am I doing here?
Am I legit to be their Parisian guide?
In the 1970s, 1980s, there were lotsof immigrations, uh, from Africa, from
(14:27):
the Caribbean to, to mainland France.
And once again, thisdivide became relevant.
Like, oh, I'm from Martinique.
Martinique is a French department.
Why would you treat me like animmigrant from Senegal, for instance?
In a way, blackness iscoming back in France.
They have this sort ofParisian black people.
where they're listening to the same music,reading the same books, and having the
(14:51):
same material experience in the world.
At the time, it was theGreat War for Democracy.
We travelled, we wereaccepted in France, etc.
I never had The work Kevi is doing isessential, telling a story of Paris that,
even in the City of Lights, is invisibleto the steady stream of tourists who
come sightseeing throughout the year.
(15:12):
While talking to Kevi, this issueof inherent racism embedded in the
language came up in an interview.
In a surprising way, rather fittingly inthe form of one of France's most famous
writers who wrote The Three Musketeersand The Count of Monte Cristo, and who
most people don't even know is black.
Alexandre Dumas, the author ofThe Three Musketeers and Monte
Cristo, very interesting if youwant to talk about racial ambiguity.
(15:37):
Who is in which category?
Uh, his grandmother was an enslavedwoman from, from Haiti back then
when it was a French colony.
And he's the son of the firstblack or first mixed race general
of the, of the French army.
So Dumas, one who representshim nowadays, 21st century, a
(15:58):
hundred percent whitewashed.
10 years ago there was a movie and itwas Gérard Depardieu with a curly nappy
wig who was playing Alexandre Dumas.
There was something interestingabout Dumas is like many famous
authors, he would hire ghost writersbecause he was writing a lot.
(16:18):
And at the time you had to publishyour novels, but chapter after
chapter in a, in a newspaper, right?
So you have to write all the time.
So sometimes Dumas who had a very busy,exciting life was behind schedule.
So he was hiring a guy.
To do some part of the work for him.
And in English, you callthat a ghostwriter in French.
(16:39):
We call it a nigger.
So when I'm doing my tour inEnglish, especially with Americans,
and they're like, why do youuse the N word for ghostwriter?
And it's because a ghostwriterand a nigger are the same.
It's a person who doesn'tget credit for their work.
And that was the official word.
In French to say ghostwriter until 2018.
(17:03):
So it shows you a world that iscompletely different when it comes to
political correctness, for instance,
I have to choose for now.
And the most popular oneis the left bank tour.
And it's between the Latin quarter andcenter main on the left bank of Paris.
So very beautiful area.
(17:23):
Lots of intellectuals and artists livethere over hundreds and hundreds of years.
And when I tell people my maintour takes place in this area,
people do not understand.
Their first reaction is,what are you talking about?
It's a rich intellectual neighborhood.
Why would you do a tourof black history there?
(17:43):
Some of the first people who claimed ablack identity in France were students.
And it's the student neighborhoodwith universities such as
La Sorbonne for instance.
So this tour starts from the Pantheon.
Which is a very special monument in Paris.
My favorite one, if you askme, uh, from an architectural
point of view, it's beautiful.
(18:04):
In the 1700s, when they builtit, they were inspired by St.
Paul Church in Londonwith a beautiful dome.
So they have a sort ofreplica of that dome.
The monument initially was supposedto be a Catholic church named St.
Genevieve, representing aspecial relationship between the.
(18:25):
French royal family andthe Catholic church.
Right?
So that was the 1760s.
So the King of France himself came andput the first stone to build the church,
but it took them 30 years to build it.
And when they finished thechurch, it was a revolution.
It's the 1790s.
People are not that excitedin the royal family anymore.
(18:46):
So they decided to transform, to subvertthe church and they made it a Pantheon.
Pantheon in Greek means for all thegods, and they had one, one mission.
It was to honor the great heroes orthe people who inspired the revolution.
So that's the 1790s.
That is the beginning of,of, of the, of the monument.
(19:08):
But this monument right now, wecall it a Republican monument.
Republican in the way, not leftor right, but it's related to
the history of the republic.
So if you want to go in there, if youwant to be accepted one day in the
pantheon, well, first you have to be dead.
But then you have to berelated to the history of the
(19:28):
revolutions and the republics.
It's not your family.
It's not because you're an aristocrat.
It's because you're a hero.
And it's one of the few monuments in Pariswhere you will hear about colonization,
decolonization, slavery, the abolition ofslavery, because abolitionists are there.
Aimé Césaire, a great poet and politicianfrom Martinique, he died in 2008.
(19:50):
In 2011, he was accepted in the Pantheon.
For a couple of weeks, therewere huge portraits of his face.
People would ask me one question, whois this African American over there?
Pointing at images, and I would go nuts.
Kevi is doing the importantwork of reinstating the black
(20:11):
community into the topography ofthe city, one tourist at a time.
But it's also crucial that wego beyond highlighting the black
success stories who rose beyondtheir station, shone brilliantly
enough for the white establishment toturn their heads and pay attention.
We shouldn't only hear aboutthese exceptional cases.
I got in touch with Olivette Otele,a Parisian academic working at
(20:34):
SOAS University of London, whoseresearch and recent book, African
Europeans, addresses this very issue.
Are people aware of this history?
Um, you know, I know that thereare many statues that, um, that
show some of the great, uh, blackmilitary heroes, for instance.
But, you know, is there awarenessof, of this really long history
(20:55):
of the black presence in France?
No, no.
What, what people, most people are awareof is 20th century, 20th century heroes.
Um, Dumas, of course, but20th century mostly Senghor.
You know, the father of lanegritude and all the rest of it.
What is interesting is that recently,I think a couple of months ago,
uh, President Macron said that he,he needed a list of exceptional
(21:18):
people that, uh, and we can thinkabout status for those exceptional.
And most people just rebelled,saying, well, the exceptional put
them on the pedestal, obviously.
What about those who actuallyfought to get those exceptional
there on that pedestal?
What about them?
And some stories are justincredibly, um, dense and, uh,
(21:38):
not taught at all in France.
And, and that's, youknow, that's strategy.
I know it's very convenient,really, to have the exceptional one.
And quite often, in terms ofarchival material, we do have
information about the exceptional onebecause he or she was exceptional.
And therefore, we have very littleunderstanding of ordinary people who
(21:58):
went on about their lives and, Butyou know, they, they, they were the
powerhouse behind all these storiesthat they were the ones who contributed.
And for me, I, I see exceptionalism assomething double edged, uh, sword, because
we want to know about these things.
They're all models.
But then they don't necessarily teachus about the others, ones that are,
(22:22):
you know, who built many nations.
And even with someone like Dumas,even, even in his, his own heritage,
you can keep going back and keepgoing back to find out who his
ancestors were, which sort of tells adifferent story as well, doesn't it?
Yes, it does.
And I, I really like the idea thatThroughout the century you have people
crossing European histories and Africanhistories, but you also have these giving
(22:48):
us an insight into what society was like.
And that's the only way we canhave a glimpse of those voices
that are not necessarily there.
You know, they're glimpses, butthey tell you a lot about the
different kind of narratives.
You have the colonial narrative and youhave people of African descent narratives.
And of course, the experience isdifferent, but at so many levels and
(23:10):
how you have to, some of them had tocompose with the system and actually
Except being seen as the exceptionaland in terms of modern day France.
Do you find that there is a formulationof blackness that manages to hold together
people from the Caribbean from Africafrom from West Africa from North Africa?
(23:34):
Does blackness work like that in France?
So would you say say something different?
It's very different.
It's a bit.
It's again, um, The divide and rule.
It means that people from Dumtum,which is, um, territories, uh, for
example, the Caribbean, they're French.
People of African descent, Senegaleseand all, and all that, their parents,
for example, if they came in 1970,they were not French anymore.
(23:56):
There are degrees of Frenchnessthat don't really help.
Bring together the idea of blackness.
And this is incredibly sad becausebetween the walls, you had African
students, Caribbean students workingtogether to end colonization.
And they were, they were completelyin sync in working together.
Modern day France, at leastwhen I was growing up was very
(24:17):
much, you know, fragmented.
There are those who aremore French than the others.
Younger generation, the onesthat I taught when I was
teaching Paris 13 for six years.
Um, and it was located inthe project, that university.
They're completely in sync.
I mean, you're going to say, I'mMartinique, I'm from Martinique,
I'm from Guadeloupe and all that.
(24:38):
They were born in, inthere, in, in the banlieue.
Uh, they claim in the space oftheir parents or grandparents.
Um, and their, their understanding ofblackness, they wouldn't formulate it
as blackness, but their understandingis that we're all in this together.
So.
It's, it's incredibly vibrant and, um,I loved every second of it because it
(25:02):
was, they were teaching me that you canreach a level where you're going to be
able to put these aside and actuallywork to, to fight the oppressor.
(25:22):
When people are asking me questions like,why are there so many black people here?
I was not really blaming them.
I was blaming also Frenchculture a little bit.
to show anything about its blackhistory, its black presence.
So when I started doing the tours,immediately, I got some media attention.
(25:45):
What I mean is there were journalistsasking me questions about the tours.
It was both positive and negative.
This is amazing.
There's this young black man doingthese tours that are very different.
We've never really thoughtabout Paris this way.
And on the other side, there is afear for separatism or tribalism.
(26:07):
As you would say in French, wecall it communautarisme, like
a sort of French nightmare.
of minorities being isolated fromthe mainstream and doing their
own, their own things together.
And from a French point of view,we're all together all the time.
And it's beautiful.
That sounds very nice, but, um,uh, it's not working so well.
(26:29):
So can we talk about that?
Today, many of the city's blackpopulation can be found in the
banlieue, the French word for suburb.
Some say that bon lieu comesfrom the words bonissement,
banishment and lieu, place.
In the early 19th century, Paris wasa city rampant with crime and disease
(26:54):
and so, funded largely by colonialriches from Africa, Napoleon III decided
to clear the slums, commissioningcity planner Georges Eugène Haussmann
to create a new Paris with bettersewage systems and wider streets that
could be patrolled and controlledto replace the shady, revolution
friendly labyrinth the city had become.
(27:15):
Aside from the newer streets being easierto police, the poor and unwanted were
also driven further out of the centre ofParis because of the higher rents these
new, luxurious townhouses commanded.
It was the era that gave birth to theParis the world knows and loves, but
today, beyond the periphery, the banishedones still reside, now often immigrants
(27:36):
from West and North Africa, as well asRoma travelling communities, who are
cut off from the centre of the city.
This idea of commune tourism that Kevimentioned and which the French are so
eager to hold at bay, when coupled withtheir trenchant belief in laicite, which
in English we might call secularism,the separation of church and state,
means that these communities areoften at odds with the French system.
(28:11):
There's a scene in the cult Frenchfilm La Haine, where DJ Cutkiller
starts blasting out a mashup ofEdith Piaf and KRS One's Sound of the
Police from a window in a tower block.
Makes me wonder, isn't there space forthat beautiful multiculturalism, that
radical spirit of hope and resistancewhich Black Europe knows so much about,
to influence and challenge traditionalEuropean norms without such strong
(28:35):
kickback from the establishment?
I asked Helen and Celia aboutthis idea of communitarism.
France is not a country thatis celebrating communities.
In France, they are trying theirbest to let us believe that we're
all brothers and sisters, on the samelevel, equal, and there is this thing
that is about laïcité, la laïcité.
(28:57):
In the name of this, France is not thatmuch celebrating their communities.
I think it's sad that, uh,the Black cultures that are
related to France cannot claim.
being like, well, you know,this is representative of, of
us and, and us in this country.
We don't have that.
(29:18):
I still think that Paris is a stronghub, uh, for the African, uh, diaspora
and especially for the Afropeans.
It's still shining on, uh, allthose, um, aesthetic proposition.
I'm thinking about also visualartists like, uh, Beyagil, Ngacha,
or, uh, people like Alexi Peskin.
(29:39):
All those people that, when I'm throughoutthe world or whatever, and I see their
work, I see that they're doing exhibitshere and there, I'm like, yeah, yeah,
that's my people, that's my people.
It's, it's dope.
Through writing Afropean and recordingthis series, I've seen that the growth
of black intellectual and creativetalent in Europe is everywhere, and
(30:01):
that there are people across thecontinent fighting for its recognition.
But all too often, this is held backby European countries setting up
boundaries to safeguard their culture,rather than embrace the multiculturalism
that has always been present.
Something that Olivette Otele saidin our interview got me thinking, if
Europe doesn't fully acknowledge thestructural injustices inherent in its
(30:23):
colonial history and the complicatedresultant legacy, how can we move on?
It's, it's the colonial mentality that'sstill there that Bob Marley talks about.
It's, it's, it's so pervasive.
The problem is that it's being taught.
It hasn't been challenged and childrenare learning about the, the colonies,
(30:44):
but it's in a way that seemed topresent the story as a finished story.
It's, it's not finished.
The legacies of the past are still thereand for many people very much present.
The
answer for me lies in the collaboration,optimism, resilience, and persistence
(31:04):
of the communities and individuals I'vetalked to who through creativity and
activism in the face of this Ugly History,which like the many headed Hydra keeps
returning, are starting conversations,filling in the gaps in this process
of historical erasure, and definingthemselves in a Europe that at this
present time so desperately needs them.
(31:25):
The Afropian Podcast is a coproduction brought to you by
Afropian and Reduce Listening.
It's written and presented by me,Johny Pitts, and was produced by Femi
Oriogun Williams, with productionsupport from Charlie Towler.
Thank you to National Geographicwho supported this series.
This
is the final episode of the season.
(31:47):
Don't forget you can read more storiesfrom Black Europe in my book, Afropean
Notes from Black Europe, which is outnow published by Penguin in the UK and
translated into French, Spanish, Italian,German, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese.
Afropean, the journal, a photographicessay bringing together 20 years
of images and ephemera from mywork is out now published by Morel.
(32:09):
And you can listen back tothe other five episodes on
Brussels, Amsterdam and London.
Berlin, Stockholm, and Lisbon,wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you have any ideas about whereyou'd like us to go for season two, then
there are so many cities encoded withAfropean stories, we'd love to visit.
London, Rome, Madrid, Marseille, notto mention so much of Eastern Europe.
(32:30):
It's more important thanever to tell these stories.
So if you've got any requests or ideas,do get in touch with us through the
website I run with Ayomi Bazoue, NatalouMin, Nina Kamara, and Tola Ositelou.
Afro pean.
com.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.