{"id":8335,"date":"2021-06-21T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T04:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/?p=8335"},"modified":"2022-04-30T16:10:01","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T20:10:01","slug":"ella-la-dame-blanche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/ella-la-dame-blanche\/","title":{"rendered":"She\/La Dame Blanche"},"content":{"rendered":"

La Dame Blanche taught me that there is no easy review. Listen <\/span>She<\/span><\/i> a first time and I had the impression of having heard it in a thousand other voices, with its <\/span>autotune<\/span><\/i> occasional, the <\/span>backgrounds<\/span><\/i> of early 2000s pop and hip hop. Then I was annoyed by a lot of gratuitous vulgarities and the occasional comfortable rhyme.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no easy review, I repeat. I listened to the album twice, then a third and so on until I reached the fifth. I decided to let him rest for a while, then I thought about an interview but our schedules did not coincide. I assumed I wasn't capable of reviewing it, admitted defeat, and moved on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it so happens that La Dame Blanche gave me a second lesson. The obstacle, the discord, the deafness was mine. She had conceived a record, her part of the dialogue was done. The one who wasn't ready to listen was me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I want you to understand me: being a woman, black, a migrant in some way and a worker in the arts \u2014if that's what I could call her\u2014 I expected a conceptually complex representation, with a high-register discourse, perhaps artificial, in an equal representation. I confess that I came to his music predisposed to find an artist who articulated powerful and cultured lyrics with melodic experimentation. I admit I expected <\/span>She<\/span><\/i>, his musical production of 2020, an impressive album, rebellious against the traditional symbols of power. I wanted a Dame Blanche on my terms, but she's very clear on hers.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was my third lesson: to typify a revolution is to collude with its detractors. It was then that I paid attention. The great value of every artist is to be authentic and sincere with his audience, but more so with himself. Yait\u00e9 Ramos manages to be authentic behind La Dame Blanche, without grandiose ins and outs or artifice. That annoyance I felt when listening to it for the first time is its true virtue, because that discomfort warned me that my shields as a black feminist, frontline in favor of otherness, were getting dusty. I prejudged her, as if there were only one way of being and being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His is then the mission of questioning not only those who traditionally sit on the right hand of power, but also those of us who are very comfortable in our supposed left. As she herself said in <\/span>the believer, <\/span><\/i>"There is no wrong done or wrong said."<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

She <\/span><\/i>it is an album guided by sorority, but not in gloating of victimization. From his statements there is an accusatory desire, denouncer but without Manichaean militancy. His female subjects love and cry alike, confessing their suffering and pain, but also their choice to put up with the oppressor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The album opens, not surprisingly, with a religious statement, <\/span>the believer, <\/span><\/i>the one who asks the saints for everyone. As she invokes the saints, she provides abundant spirituality to those around her, to other victims, to other weak who depend on her. This generous woman in pleasure, sensual too, is in <\/span>The unconditional<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>The mentalist.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

the condemned <\/span><\/i>knows well the frustration of those who suffer the weight of discrimination due to their origin and race. Dame Blanche denounces the underestimation, the contempt to which she is confined: "I have an unideal physique and your clothes make me uncomfortable (...) She tells me calmly, black girl, take that broom \/ For the vacant position I think you are very lazy", but they are also the answers, the resilience, the dusting off and walking: \u201cAnd I kept on holding my head high \/ Giving my people the best of me \/ And I kept asking for mercy \/ To be lucky enough to survive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n