Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary psychiatrist, political theorist, and spokesperson for the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), wrote both "A Dying Colonialism and his 1961 anti-colonial manifesto The Wretched of the Earth…in effect, as spoken word performances," dictated to his secretary, Marie-Jeanne Manuellan, while he paced and elaborated ideas and theory from his mind. Yes, Fanon rapped his theory, like Tupac Shakur, Boots Riley, Dead Prez, and Medusa & Feline Science.
Manuellan explains in her memoir that these rap sessions were intense. So, when Fanon invited himself over to Manuellan's house on Christmas Eve 1959, she was unsure what to expect.
As Adam Shatz wrote in "Rapping with Fanon," for The New York Review,"To her [Manuellan] "great astonishment," Fanon was the life of the party. "Smiling, truly happy, cracking jokes," he picked up a guitar, sang West Indian songs, and chatted till the small hours with her husband about jazz and blues. Music brought out a levity, a warmth, in Fanon that Marie-Jeanne had never before noticed."
Shatz article illuminates the influence that Fanon's ideas and theories had on musical formations, national culture, and the Black radical tradition.
Check out these four joints that mention Frantz Fanon:
The Coup, "Dig it."
Michael Franti's, "Chocolate Supa Highway."
Digable Planet's, "9th Wonder (Blackitolism)."
Linton Kwesi Johnson's album, Dread beat an' blood, has several references to Fanon
