Aya Nakamura’s music is one of France’s top cultural exports. But reports that she might perform at the Paris Games have prompted fierce debates over identity and language.
Aya Nakamura is France’s most popular singer at home and abroad, with 25 top 10 singles in France and over 20 million followers on social media.Credit...Charlotte Hadden for The New York Times
In four months, France will host the Paris Olympics, but which France will show up? Torn between tradition and modernity, the country is in the midst of an identity crisis.
The possible choice for the opening ceremony of Aya Nakamura, a superstar French-Malian singer whose slang-spiced lyrics stand at some distance from academic French, has ignited a furor tinged with issues of race and linguistic propriety and the politics of immigration.