Abd Al Malik

Presented by Les Visiteurs du Soir 1-L-R-25-1481 / 3-015785

Abd Al Malik revisits his seminal album Gibraltar, imagining a stage production that blends music, dance, and visual arts to embody the idea of a universal identity born from the local and open to the world. Between Paris, Strasbourg, his Congolese origins, and his faith, Abdel Malik illustrates a multiple and complex identity. Influenced by thinkers such as Camus and Glissant, he champions the idea that identity is not fixed but composed of different affiliations that coexist and interact. With Gibraltar, he already sought to explore this notion by mixing artistic genres (rap, jazz, literature, theatre, slam) and creating bridges between often separate worlds. He presents rap as a fundamentally hybrid art, capable of reconciling cultures thanks to the principle of sampling, which assembles elements from all over the world. This artistic approach thus becomes a metaphor for humanity itself, made of mixtures and relationships. Twenty years later, he highlights the urgency of this vision in a context of globalisation that tends to standardise and erase differences. Celebrating Gibraltar is therefore a call for reconciliation: with oneself, with others, and around a common humanity, a necessary prerequisite for valuing singularities. Celebrating GIBRALTAR twenty years after its release is to suggest today the importance and urgency of reconciliation: a dialogue from oneself to oneself and from oneself to others.