Journalist and music history graduate Félix B. Desfossés and rapper Imposs have made it their mission, in an eight-episode docuseries, to reestablish the facts regarding the roots of hip-hop in Quebec.
“Everyone knows that hip-hop in Quebec did not start with RBO and Lucien Francoeur,” laughs Imposs, who co-hosts the docuseries The Roots of Hip-Hop in Quebec, available on the Télé-Québec website starting February 1, with Félix B. Desfossés.
Even if he knew that the first steps of this culture in our province were not attributed to the right people, the co-founder of the Muzion group still did not know what the true narrative of this story was.
“I didn’t even know who opened the doors for the art form I practice […] when Félix approached me, with his research and the book he wrote, I said let’s gowe tell the real story,” explains Imposs, in an interview with The newspaper.
“I have always found that in Quebec, we have been intellectually lazy in our research concerning the history of our music,” laments Félix B. Desfossés, who is the author of two separate works on the roots of hip music. -hop and those of metal in Quebec.
The two men’s quest for truth took them back to the early 1980s, when Michael Williams hosted Club 980the first radio show to broadcast hip-hop in Quebec.
One thing leading to another, the hosts meet people who have left their mark on the history of hip-hop. From Flight, who launched the first radio show dedicated to this musical style at the end of the 1980s, to Blondie B, one of the first female rappers to attract attention in Quebec, to DJ Choice, from Dubmatique.
Deeper than music
In addition to highlighting the true roots of hip-hop in our province, the docuseries also presents a portrait of the socio-political situation in Quebec at the time of the 1980 referendum and the distance between Francophones and Anglophones, in order to attempt to explain why the narrative was initially not transmitted in the right way.
“The reality that was experienced by the Montreal English-speaking community during the referendum era was almost not told in the French-speaking media,” notes Félix B. Desfossés. “There were young people in Montreal at the time who felt squeezed and excluded from the country’s project. [Cette jeunesse] wanted to express herself, so she clung to this new culture which was hip-hop.”
2024-01-29 04:12:39
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