2023-12-18 09:25:00
The Cameroonian slammer publishes a hybrid and rhythmic literary object, between prose and poetry.
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You have to have seen him declaim his poems and sometimes even improvise, as if possessed by a force much greater than himself, to grasp the full power of Marc Alexandre Oho Bambe. This Cameroonian poet and slammer, who lives in France and calls himself Captain Alexandre on stage, the code name of René Char during the Resistance, has just published Remember Not to Die Without Having Loved (Calmann-Lévy), an object hybrid literary where prose and poetry mix in a chant so rhythmic that when reading it you almost think you are hearing it.
The story of a “half-negro”, as his maternal grandparents called him, who had never forgiven their daughter for marrying “a colored man” who one day receives a package in his mailbox with audio cassettes, a record, Mo’ Better Blues, and a photo of a man who bears a striking resemblance to him. So this jazz madman, who came close to death due to an overdose, decides to delve into his past, his present and perhaps even his future, to understand. And tell everything to his daughter Indira, his passion.
Remember not to die without having loved, Marc Alexandre Oho Bambe, Calmann-Lévy, 280 pp, €19.50
The extract
I grew up as best I could, with all that, the rage in my heart in tatters, torn between contrary injunctions and diametrically opposed visions, speeches on races reducing me to the pain of my skin, my brown Negro skin, my skin-escaped, my skin-saved by jazz, music whose rhythm and freedom inscribed me within myself and reconciled me. Thanks to music, to this music, I was no longer a café-au-lait bastard, thanks to music, to this music I was going to discover who I was, discover that I was.
Son of.
Cyclones.
And of.
Volcanoes.
Demiurge.
Creator.
Of beauty.
And magic.
Child of.
The moment.
Free.
Like the wind.
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