This is the hip hop class of Anas Basbousi, aka Bawss, which inspired the latest film by Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Nabil Ayouch, in competition at the last edition of the Cannes Film Festival and recently at the Carthage Cinematographic Days. Anas Basbousi, Moroccan rap star, put his career on hold to pass on his passion to other young people thanks to the Positive School, a project launched by the rapper at the Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen cultural center of the Ali Zaoua Foundation (created by Nabil Ayouch in Morocco). By observing him and his students, the filmmaker found material to produce a musical comedy full of panache. The one instilled by the desire for emancipation of a youth who makes rap their megaphone. Interview with Anas Basbousi.
Franceinfo Africa: cow do you explain that rap has become the soundtrack of personal and national revolutions, especially in the Maghreb? What makes rap touch people in Morocco?
Anas Basbousi: in Morocco, we grew up with the idea that the best only happens elsewhere and only to others. The popular classes are, as everywhere, often sidelined and above all never put forward. Find all those feelings and all that strength in a musical style that doesn’t belong to anyone, that doesn’t require having a singer’s voice, a style that just requires having a built and solid speech, something that can be believed. the people ; that’s what touches. It’s also the fact that I’m doing a song that talks about my life, my problems, my truth, and that it refers to the truth of many other people because there are young people who look like those that we see in the film all over the world. This is also the goal of rap, namely that one person can speak in front of an audience who can identify with the lyrics, who can learn them and when they sing them, they make them their own and it may even make him cry. This is where the strength of rap lies. This is why this style speaks to the youth.
At the origin of the Positive School, you have a desire to transmit, to support these young people so that they can assert themselves. Why ?
I grew up in a neighborhood where there was no cultural center, no youth center. There was no one to teach us what hip hop was. We did this research ourselves. Today, having a cultural center that hosts this kind of activity is an opportunity for these young people. I think that should be the case everywhere because hip hop is the music of young people and youth rhymes with future.
Sidi Moumen (popular suburb of Casablanca), you say in the film, is often associated with terrorism. How can this cultural center and this film help to overcome this prejudice?
This is already the case since the broadcast of the trailer and the selection at the Cannes Film Festival. In 90% of the feedback we get, people say: “Finally something about us!”. Each of us – hip hop artist, dancer or rapper – this film is made for him and is about his life because we have all been through the same thing. Hip hop was a style foreign to our culture, to our traditions that was not understood and accepted. Especially in my time, in the 2000s, anyone who wanted to dance faced a taboo. It is taboo for a man and a woman who dances, it is a woman who is not well.
Your class is very equal, there are as many young men as young girls in your rap lessons. Why are you paying special attention to it?
Compared to men, women are in the minority in rap. It is a situation that concerns me. I think, as we see in the film, that this is the only way that will allow a woman to express herself openly, to speak directly to her family through a song. What she will not be allowed to do at home or for which she risks being punished. Her speech will be more accepted in this musical form, maybe even that it will touch the people to whom she is addressed and change their mentality. We have experienced this. Initially, we struggled to convince families with this project and this film. Everyone had fears and said to themselves that we are on the wrong path, that this is not how we succeed in life. But today people are sending us messages of support and love.
As the teacher that you are gains the confidence of your students, the class can discuss everything, including sensitive topics like religion. This is what we see in the film. Does this also happen in reality?
This is happening in a slightly different form. For example, in the studio, when my kids go to record a song, I always want to understand what they mean and why. They have to convince me first so that I can accompany them and give them the benefit of good artistic direction. We discussed religion, politics, their problems, the origins of hip hop and I gave them concrete examples of successful people who lived, like us, sometimes in neighborhoods even more disadvantaged than ours. These people had things to say and share and it touched others that made these rappers successful.
There is a hit in this movie about the power of money. And the power of this song is that it never leaves you when you leave the screening …
(Laughs) Money is described in this song as a beautiful girl that everyone wants to meet and marry. This title speaks about certain truths in a positive way, in a musical form that appeals to everyone and makes people dance. The words are always engaged, among others, when it is question of this money which is necessary to be in good health, to find love, to study… Everyone needs this money.
You play your own role in “High and Strong”. How do you approach your cinematographic double?
It went very well. I play a character that is largely inspired by my personality. I remain a fairly discreet person about his private life and the film shows it very well. I am also a free electron. I left the family home since the age of 19 to try to fulfill my dreams, the fact that I am seen in this car (one of the flagship images of the film, Editor’s note), it represents a form of freedom that I claim. As for the way I teach, it’s very real and matches what I do in real life. Nevertheless, it remains a written role and a real acting act directed by a director.
High and loud by Nabil Ayouch
With Anas Basbousi, Ismail Adouab, Meriem Nekkach, Nouhaila Arif, Zineb Boujemaa, Abdelilah Basbousi, Mehdi Razzouk, Amina Kannan and Soufiane Belali
French release: November 17, 2021