Aya Nakamura, the French-Malian singer caught in an Olympic storm

Aya Nakamura’s music is one of France’s top cultural exports. But reports that she might perform at the Paris Games have prompted fierce debates over identity and language. Photograph: Charlotte Hadden/The New York Times, but which France will show up? Torn between tradition and modernity, the country is in the midst of an identity crisis.

Nakamura is by some distance France’s most popular singer at home and abroad, with 25 top 10 singles in France and more than 20 million followers on social media. Born Aya Danioko in Bamako, Mali, she took her stage name from a character in Heroes, a science fiction series on NBC. Raised in a suburb of Paris, she mixes French lyrics with Arabic, English and West African languages like Bambara, the Malian language of her parents, in songs that interweave R&B, zouk and the rhythms of Afropop.

French artist Ugo Gattoni looks at the official posters of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games he made at Orsay Museum in Paris. Photograpg: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images The furore over her possible performance reflects a fractured France. Some see a reactionary nation intent on ignoring how large-scale immigration, particularly from North Africa, has enriched the country hosting the 33rd Summer Olympics of modern times. Celebrities, left-wing politicians and government officials support the idea of Nakamura taking a prominent role in the ceremony.

“There is a sort of religion of language in France”, said Julien Barret, a linguist and writer who has written an online glossary of the language prevalent in the banlieues where Nakamura grew up. “French identity is conflated with the French language”, he added, in what amounts to “a cult of purity”.

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