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News
Street Roots • May 12-18, 2017
Street Roots • May 12-18, 2017
News
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P H O T O , C O U R T E S Y O F P A R F A IT B A S S A LE
Empathy
through
the arts
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F R U B IC O N
Portland’s Parfait Bassale,
a musician from West Africa,
has a unique style o f m usic and
storytelling aimed a t inspiring a
better understanding o f others
BY E M IL Y GREEN
STAFF W R IT E R
arfait Bassale is a local singer, songwriter
and rap artist who, when he’s not at his day
job, produces music out of the basement of
his Northeast Portland home.
While virtually unknown in the U.S., he’s
become popular in Africa in recent
years, with several of his original
tracks getting regular radio play
across Senegal, Niger and Togo.
With years of practice and
study, Parfait has learned to
artfully trigger emotional
response through his skillful
manipulation of lyrics and sound.
But to truly understand and
appreciate Parfait’s music is to
•4 periodic smes on the perso,
understand and appreciate the
within Portland's im m igrant
man himself.
Those close to him say the two
are indistinguishable from each
See previous
other - that he is a truly authentic artist.
Planet Portland profiles
Parfait’s melodious journey begins long before
at news.streetroots.org/
he mastered the guitar and began to compose his
planetportland
unique soulful blend of blues, pop, reggae and hip-
hop.
It began when he was about 12 years old and
was introduced to the poetic beats of French rap.
The French colonized much of West Africa in
the mid-19th century, and while most conquered
nations regained their independence in 1960,
French remains the official language in many
areas.
Thus, while the influx of immigrants to France
that followed decolonization came from culturally
diverse countries, French was a language many
already shared.
It was the early 1990s, and African immigrants
in French ghettos were creating rhythmic prose as
their vehicle for decrying colonialism and the
discrimination they were met with in Europe.
Themes of cultural identity and societal ills
echoed throughout their politically charged album
tracks.
“It was just powerful,” Parfait said. “It was the
music of my generation.”
P
Planet
Portland
Left: Parfait Bassdle, of Portland, blends French and English in his music, which aims to
bring people from different backgrounds together. He began his music career as a teenager in
Senegal. Top: High school friends Aziz Fall (left) and Wally N ’diaye (center) and Parfait
(right) formed as the rap group Sixth Sense. Above: His first visit to Haiti was in 2010. He
has since returned to teach an empathy workshop for schoolteachers using music.
At the time, Parfait was a boy living more than
2,000 miles away in Dakar, the coastal capital city
of Senegal.
Radio stations across the small West African
nation often played French rap, and he would
listen intently.
Like many French rap icons, he too liked to
vent his frustrations in written prose. He also
knew what it felt like to be an outlier,-often facing
discrimination at school.
Theirs was an art form that resonated with him
deeply.
While business and formal education were still
conducted in French, most West Africans spoke
their native languages at home and in the streets.
Parfait was originally from Benin, a nation on
Africa’s North Central Atlantic coast Not long
after his birth in 1981, his family moved to the
larger inland nation of Niger, where Parfait spent
seven years of his childhood. He quickly picked up
the native language, Zerma, from playing with
neighborhood children. At home, his family spoke
his mother’s native language, Mina. At school, he
was taught in French.
When his family moved to Senegal, it was the
third time he had a new native language to learn.
This time, he relied primarily on his French to
communicate with his peers, but he spoke it with
a funny foreign accent
The other kids, who all spoke Wolof in the halls
at school and on the streets, would say of him,
“This is just a gnack.”
It was the term used for immigrants from
places such as Benin, the Ivory Coast and Togo.
Loosely translated, it means “the savages.”
Parfait couldn’t remember living in Benin, but it
was a label he carried with him regardless, and
sometimes the label was all that others saw.
“It was a loaded term,” Parfait said. He
remembers trying to make sense of what he called
the man-to-man cruelty and micro-aggressions he
was experiencing.
“We’re all Africans. We’ve all been colonized by
the French,” he said. “Why would we have ways of
characterizing each other?”
As hip-hop culture spread across the West, rap
artists began popping up in Senegal, as well. Some
groups rhymed in French, but most used their
native language, Wblof, as a way to re-appropriate
the genre.
“One of the greatest paradoxes of the
introduction of hip-hop music in Senegal is that
unlike the United States, where it originated, or
Europe, it was the privileged class that first
adopted and promoted its lifestyle,” according to
an article on Music in Africa Foundation’s website.
Parfait described his family as “lower middle
cl^ss,” by African standards.
His father, Joseph Bassale, was an air-traffic
safety engineer moving up the ranks at his
company. It was when Parfait was 9 that his father
was promoted to a position that took the family to
Dakar, Senegal, where his employer’s
headquarters were located.
Dakar’s metropolitan area has a population of
more than 2 million. While rural areas of Africa
might have fewer amenities, this city was built
with modern infrastructure.
There they lived in a four-bedroom, two-
bathroom flat, and like most urban Senegalese
homes, it was equipped with a telephone line,
running water and electricity.
Parfait’s parents drove a Peugeot 504, and
unless times were tight, they had cable TV, his
window into the West.
Every couple of years, the Bassale family flew
back to Benin for vacation.
Aside from the discrimination he faced as an
immigrant, Parfait’s childhood was a happy one.
He often spent his afternoons playing soccer in
the streets with neighborhood kids. At home, he
adored the family dog, Wolfart.
They had two mango trees in the front yard that
he liked to climb. He would sit among the
branches, tearing the skin from the mango with
his teeth so he could eat the fruit fresh off the
tree.
While 95 percent of Senegal is Muslim, Parfait’s
family was among the Christian minority. His
mother, Josephine Bassale, sang in the church
choir.
“One of the beautiful things about Senegal and
other parts of the world was the relationship
between the religious communities was really
harmonious,” he said. “During Christian holidays,
Christians will bring food to their neighbors who
are Muslim, and vice versa.”
As a teenager, he wore sagging jeans and
oversized T-shirts. High schoolers in Dakar
sported Timberland boots and the latest Air
Jordans, trends they picked up from Western
media.
Parfait found friendship with two classmates
who were also the sons of expatriates, Aziz Fall
and Wally N’diaye.
When the boys were about 14, like many other
teens in Senegal, they formed a rap group. What
set them apart was that they rapped m French, a
language they all knew well.
They would practice their rhymes together on
the weekends, in the bedrooms and courtyards at
their homes. After scribbling lyrics in pencil on
notepads, they’d recite them to instrumental
tracks from more prominent artists.
This pastime was so popular that a handful of
local music stores specialized in the instrumental-
only cassette tapes they would use for their
background beats.
The three friends began to perform at
afterschool events and became known at school as
the rappers.
Their teachers and parents encouraged them to
focus on their studies, but their classmates
cheered them on.
They called themselves Sixth Sense.
Parfait laughs at the name now. “Sixth Sense -
yeah, we thought we had so much to share,” he
joked.
He remembers a song they wrote titled ““Le
Poids des Noirs,” which he said means “the
burden of the black people.”
“In that song, we talked about some of the
social challenges we were still seeing, like poverty,
and trying to expand it to what we researched and
heard about in other places - in America,” he
said. “We were trying to make a connection
between that experience all across the world, and
how that weight can still be felt.”
Parfait’s parents often scolded him for writing
songs when he was supposed to be doing
homework.
“Very early on, I had to start doing it in hiding,”
Parfait said. “My parents were starting to see it as
in the way of my studies.”
Both of Parfait’s parents were college educated,
and they stressed the value of an education to
their children. While finances were limited at
times, Parfait’s parents kept their four children
enrolled in private schools.
In West Africa, Parfait said, the public schools
are not bad, but because of political unrest, there
could be long periods of time when the teachers
were on strike.
“That’s weeks and months of students not being
able to go to school,” he said. “And then the
government can invalidate the entire academic
year.”
Local colleges and universities had the same
problem, so when Parfait’s older brother, Jules
Bassale, graduated from high school, he traveled
to the United States on a student visa to attend
Portland State University.
Jules remembers, shortly before he left for
college, being impressed when Parfait’s rap group
was the opening act for big-name Senegalese rap
group Daara J.
“It was a big deal,” Jules said.
For Parfait, it was a surreal teenage moment:
He couldn’t believe he was singing through his
idols’ microphone.
In 1999, Sixth Sense was recognized as one of
the most promising new music groups in Senegal,
making it to the “final five” portion of a national
competition that culminated with a concert where
the winner was chosen from the top five groups.
They didn’t win, but it was an achievement Parfait
is proud of.
year later, Aziz and Wally were no longer
pursuing music, so Parfait decided to join his
brother in Oregon.
His parents told him they could pay for the first
couple of quarters at Portland State University,
A
See PARFAIT, page 10