My first time getting hip to Aya Nakamura was during my freshman year at Georgetown from my French friend, Elliot. I will be honest in that never in a million years did I imagine a white guy from Europe would be the one putting me on to a French-Malian artist. For a moment there, I thought I had been out-Africanned by this French guy. All jokes aside, Elliot is a brother of mine rather than a mere friend so I write the above statements with an underlying level of friendly-humor.
A lot of you reading this article will probably have had limited exposure to the French music scene and even less likely know the role that racial and national identity plays in popular French culture. This article is not solely dedicated to the discussion of racial politics in the French music scene but to highlight the great musical talent that is Aya Nakamura.
Aya was born in Mali but raised in Paris. Her story of coming from a former French colony to being one of the most listened to Francophone artists in the world is short of astonishment. She is one of the most listened to francophone artists on Spotify with 6.8 million monthly listeners with total career youtube views of 3.3 billion, for comparison sake The African Giant, Burna Boy, has a total of 1.67 billion youtube views.
2018 was Aya’s breakout year. As a relatively newcomer to the industry she did not waste time in taking the global French music scene by a storm. She was signed by Warner Music Group France in 2017 which is the same year that she released her debut album "Journal Intime."
Just a year later she went on to grace the cover of Forbes France’s Europe 30 under 30 in the entertainment category.
She is by far one of the leading female French artists in the world and sits right there with her male counterparts in terms of popularity. Her international and domestic notoriety started when she released her diamond-certified hit record “Djadja.” This song currently has more than 380 Million Spotify streams, 889 Million views on youtube and charted in more than nine european countries. The record follows the classic modern Afro-French pop sound that’s all about swaying your hips side to side while gracefully stomping your feet.
She went on to do a remix with Colombian pop singer Maluma, and that remix alone garnered more than 327 million streams on Spotify. Of course when you put these two big artists together you are bound to get a lot of people listening to the record. Aya also has songs with Nigerian star Davido, top French artist Dadju, and one of UK’s biggest rap artists Stormzy.
Aya currently has four albums out, with one being a deluxe album of her second project "Nakamura" garnering the most streams out of any of her albums.
When it comes to streams, Aya Nakamura is easily one of the top Francophone artists when compared to her counterparts. Let us take Dadju for example, he is a French-Congolese artist who started his solo-career around the same time as Aya and also makes Afro-French Pop/RnB music. Dadju is arguably one of the biggest artists from France right now.
He has four songs with 100 million plus streams while Aya Nakamura has five songs with 100 million plus streams with some of those records having over 300 million streams on Spotify.
The biggest difference between Dadju and Aya Nakamura is their fanbase outside of the French speaking market. Dadju has a much larger fanbase within English speaking countries than does Aya. I infer this insight from the fact that unlike Aya, Dadju has had multiple world tours in places like London, United States and Canada. He was just on a nine city US tour back in may with a final stop in Montreal.
Aya beats Dadju in the streaming game but Dadju beats her in tours. I believe this is probably due to the fact that Dadju has been in the game for much longer than Aya has, he started in a rap duo back in 2013 called The Shin Sekai giving him a much longer period of time to grow his fanbase and name recognition. I was even supposed to go see him perform in Washington, DC back in early 2020 but the pandemic had other plans.
Dadju also comes from a musical family, with a father who was a part of the famed Congolese band of Papa Wemba and a brother who is arguably the biggest French rap artist. He is also congolese, and with Congo being one of the biggest countries in Africa you are bound to have a lot of Congolese living in the diaspora thus allowing him to tap into a fanbase that spans the globe.
Nonetheless, Aya is redefining what it means to be French for both the global and domestic audiences.
Folks of African descent have played a major role in shaping today’s popular French culture all while experiencing extreme xenophobia. Oftentimes racism is looked at as an American problem but in reality it’s a global disease. Just this week, a black French MP Carlos Martens Bilongo was told to “go back to Africa” by a white French MP while speaking on the floor of France’s Assemblée Nationale.
Nakamura described how she experienced a heightened level of racism once she became the celebrity that she is today. She says “I quickly found out that being a black woman was risky” associating it “to some people, we didn’t ingrain into their brains that a black woman is a woman.” Aya goes further as to talk about being pressured to bleach her skin as a means of gaining greater acceptance in the French music industry.
You have to understand that before Aya Nakamura, there was simply no other dark skin black woman who had reached this height of notoriety and fame in France.
Emmanuel Parent, a professor of contemporary music and ethnomusicology at the University of Rennes 2 described Aya Nakamura as “the most well-known French singer in the world since Édith Piaf…But in France, you get the impression that institutions aren’t ready to accept her as representing French culture,” when discussing about the artist being snubbed at the French music awards 'Victoires de la Musique.'
In a lot of ways, Aya Nakamura seems to be the French star in contradiction.
But in reality, Nakamura is not the one who lives in contradiction, rather the French society that has yet to fully accept the black woman as having the same value and worth as that of the white woman.
Nakamura has been quite successful in expanding her revenue stream outside of just music sales.
She has a limited-edition unisex Balenciaga line of clothing and accessories collection. The unisex T-shirts have already sold out and have been worn by the likes of Burna Boy, North West, OffSet, Megan Thee Stallion, Maluma and more.
Beyond fashion she has a new partnership with the online gaming giant Fortnite. You literally cannot breathe, walk and open your phone without hearing about the metaverse and gaming these days so it is certainly no surprise that a big artist like Aya Nakamura would be taking part in this ever-so changing sector.
Her partnership with Fortnite consists of a gamified back-to-back 72 hours long concert in the platform as a part of their Sound-Wave Series. This series has featured a variety of artists from around the world.
The announcement of the Fortnite partnership came along with a new song called “VIP,” which already has 4.8 million streams on Spotify.
French-Africans have decided that this is their time to boldly take their rightful place in the global francophone music scene. French society ought to accept that meaningful inclusion of French-Africans into mainstream popular culture is one of the many ways that they can stay culturally-relevant in the next global generation. After all, Africa is the youngest continent and is poised to constitute 42% of the global youth population by 2030. The next global artists will need to create music that connects with this increasingly young African population.
There is no question that Aya Nakamura is the new face of global French music and I have no doubt that we will be seeing more like her take center stage in global francophone pop culture.
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