The genesis of a passion
When we ask Issam Krimi where this passion for Books comes from he answers “From line 13 of the metro, RER B of D and bus 150, I was born in Aubervilliers, I grew up in Stains and I went at school in Paris, and the journeys that should have taken twenty minutes took an hour, so I read to keep myself busy.” Issam’s father was a great reader, his father’s best friend too, they both gave him his literary culture “I lost my father early and his friend continued to give me books”. In Issam’s father’s library there were a lot of classics and philosophy including Nietzsche’s “The Gay Knowledge” “for me Nietzsche is the philosopher who destroys other philosophers there is an almost hip-hop side to him .” Issam Krimi then looked at Spinoza’s “Ethics” “with him there is this thing of being good with oneself, with the world, freedom, joy, he also explains how democracy is fragile, it “For me Nietzsche and Spinoza are a bit like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West, they’re very different but you can love both.”
Favorite book
Issam Krimi’s favorite book is “Ulysses” by James Joyce, a book of more than a thousand pages. “The cobblestones I read them in the summer, the story only takes place over one day, it’s a guy who falls in love with a girl, this book is crazy, yesterday I saw “Love phew “at the cinema and that made me think of this book, I am a big fan in cinema and in literature of this principle ‘I’m in love with a girl and that’s everything, that makes you, your relationship to life , to the other, how you build yourself, what are your links with your parents etc…'”
The links between literature and hip-hop
Issam Krimi is a very fan of the poet Tristan Tzara, a Romanian writer who learned French and founded the Occitan language institute “as I live in Montpellier I am very steeped in Occitan culture and I find that there is in the literature and hip-hop something from the south, we had Nougaro, Brassens and today Big Flo and Oli, their heritage is not trivial, there is this relationship to language. Tzara says ‘don’t close your eyes or those of others’, it makes me think of Damso’s ‘Brussels life’. For Issam, the books are silent but have a musicality. He also compares the poet Henri Michaux to Kanye West “in the writing, in the way of cutting…”
Foreign books
Issam Krimi tackled foreign literature to discover countries through books “I have become pro-Russian and not pro-Putin, rest assured, Russian writers are brilliant, subversive…I have also says ‘I’m not black’ I have to discover African authors, I loved ‘Amkoullel, the Peul child’ by Amadou Hampâté Bâ and recently I did a reading musical in Avignon with Omar Sy on the work of David Diop ‘Frère d’âme’ it is the first time that I read a book and that I say to myself this is really the history of French literature, it is sumptuous”. Issam’s grandparents were Algerians, Kabyles, they arrived in France without knowing how to read, they are mountain farmers, they lived in the public housing projects of Aubervilliers “it’s really classico, what…Ma family asked me to work hard at school, to read books and insisted that I enter the conservatory, a simple, basic program, in the end.”
Issam Krimi is currently preparing the 9th edition of Hip-Hop Symphonique with rapper Josman. An exceptional edition with a single artist who will unfold like a story, it will take place on Thursday, November 14 at the Maison de la radio et de la musique.
