Stromae: European youth`s favourite misery muse

Stromae: European youth's favourite misery muse
The Belgian rapper's gloomy songs draw parallels with Morrissey, chronicling the existential
crisis of a lost generation
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Agnès Poirier
The Observer, Saturday 26 October 2013
His mournful lyrics have taken him to the top of the charts in 19 European countries and his latest
album has been No 1 in France for weeks. He has been flatteringly profiled in magazines around
the world, including an interview last week in the New York Times, which said that he "channelled,
to popular acclaim, the grey that currently hangs overEurope". Meet the Morrissey of the eurozone.
Paul Van Haver, 28, a Flemish-Rwandan singer – also known as Stromae (slang for maestro) – is
emerging as a chronicler of the existential crisis facing a generation of young Europeans.
The Brussels-based performer , with 388,000 followers on Twitter, rose to fame four years ago with
the decidedly gloomy Alors on Danse (So We Dance), a favourite in clubs all over Europe for its mix
of rap and heavy beat, alongside a rather dour view of life in the eurozone.
"You say studies/ I say job/ You say money/ I say spend/ You say credit/ I say debt/ You say love/ I
say brats/ You say always/ I say divorce/ So we dance/ Then you think the crisis is over/ If it got
worse we'd be dead/ But it's not finished so you shout even louder/ And so we dance."
In the last 12 months, Stromae has appeared on the covers of numerous magazines, from the
French cultural bibles Télérama andInrockuptibles to Elle. Stromae's physique is part of his appeal
and a small army of image advisers is working hard on it. Tall, slim, with a cafe-au-lait skin colour
and pale green eyes, he is the embodiment of multicultural Europe.
He also cultivates an androgynous look. In a music video filmed on Valentine's Day on a gondola in
Venice, he wears makeup and a ballerina chignon, and sings, from a woman's point of view, a love
song about an acrimonious break-up.
His mixed heritage (he was brought up Belgian by his mother while his father, from Rwanda, was
mostly absent), provides the narrative of another of his hits, Papaoutai (Dad, Where Are You?). In
the video of the song, he adopts the style and pose of a 1940s mannequin, representing the absent
father (his father was killed in the Rwandan genocide of 1994), while a younger version of him
mouths the words: "Tell me where he comes from so that I know where I am going/ Mum always
says that if you look hard you'll find/ We'll all become fathers and soon disappear/ Everybody knows
how to make babies but nobody knows how fathers are made."
If Stromae is very much of his generation, dispensing, for instance, advice on peace, violence,
silence, among other themes, in "odd little lessons" (leçons insolites) as he calls them, which he
then posts on YouTube and his website, he also belongs to a long tradition of francophone
chanteurs who mix poetry and realism. Obvious references are the rappers MC Solaar and Booba,
both brought up in France and of Senegalese and Chadian origins. In the early 1990s, MC Solaar
proved a performer could rap in French, be invited to perform in the US and sell 15m albums.
An avid reader of the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire, MC Solaar soon
became a star of belles lettres, reaping awards in France and abroad. More recently, Booba was
also heralded as an impressive auteur. The serious literary publication La Nouvelle Revue
Française even drew comparisons with the writers Louis-Ferdinand Céline and surrealist Antonin
Artaud.
It only took a song called Formidable, in which Stromae rolls the "r", for him to be compared to
fellow Belgian Jacques Brel. Less of a provocateur than Brel, Stromae has however courted
controversy with a video in which a rather camp Jesus is seen listening to a congregation shouting:
"God is too rich to listen to the poor. On behalf of the people, on behalf of rhythm, I shout
House'leluya."
It is, however, perhaps on the subject of love, and the mess everyone makes of it, that Stromae has
written his most accomplished songs. InTe Quiero, he sings: "One day, I saw her and I knew
immediately/ That we would have to play those absurd games/ Jewels, kissing, etc, sweet words
and backstabbing."
The refrain goes: "I love her to death, but in life/ We'll have to say we do, till death us do part/ Even
if we change our mind/ Even if we know we're wrong/ We won't change life/ So like everybody else
I'll suffer/ Until death."
Dissatisfaction, lucidity, realism, wordplay, Stromae's songs coupled with his image of a sleek
dandy have triggered success and a cult following. Malaise in the eurozone may be grim for many
but it has at least found a voice and a rhythm.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/27/belgian-rapper-stromae-eurozone-disaffected-youth