Meeting musician in Pala
His writing talent and interest for (French) literature became clear during the early years in Pala, where Didier appeared as a young adolescent who was so eager to read. He used the Pala library to the fullest. He was as well already interested in music and could not not make rhythm. One of his big examples was Jackson, a musician in Pala, who played the guitar and made music with his band in the eighties (and till today). This musician became one of the examples for Didier. His musical career started as a rapper, but after a few years the interest in literature took over and he turned to the genre ‘urban poetry: slam’; but not without crossing MC Solaar and Grand Corps Malade.
His youth in Chagoua was a confrontation with Chad’s misery and poverty, but also a Chad of strong men and women, people who live that misery and make something out of it. This confrontation has also made him into a protest singer.
Concert in the Netherlands
His songs tell us about his confrontation with Chadian reality, using slang and other urban language. Informed by the ideology of the pan Africanist/Marxist writers of the French tradition: Aimé Césare, Sankara and Fanon). A world of inequality is accepted, but the excesses of Chad are disgusting (Dans mon Quartier). The way the government treats its citizens, in fact in such a way that citizenship becomes an offense in itself, is also the topic of his songs. They all refer to the impossibility of being a person, of being a free person (prisonier). Always caged and imprisoned in one’s own body, own assumptions, in one’s own body (Apprenons à les Comprendre). As a philosopher he is always dreaming about a better world, but knows that that will not be there (Les Cieux ont Brûlé).
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