Abd Al Malik

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

Abd Al Malik revisits his landmark album Gibraltar, imagining a stage form that blends music, dance and visual arts to embody the idea of a universal identity born of the local and open to the world. Between Paris, Strasbourg, his Congolese origins and his faith, Abdel Malik embodies a multiple and complex identity. Influenced by thinkers such as Camus and Glissant, he argues that identity is not fixed but made up of different belongings that coexist and engage in dialogue.

With Gibraltar, he already sought to explore this notion by mixing artistic genres (rap, jazz, literature, theatre, slam) and building bridges between worlds that are often kept apart. He presents rap as a fundamentally hybrid art form, capable of reconciling cultures through the principle of sampling, which assembles elements from across the world. This artistic approach thus becomes a metaphor for humanity itself, made of mixtures and relationships.

Twenty years on, he stresses the urgency of this vision in a context of globalisation that tends to homogenise and erase differences. Celebrating Gibraltar is therefore a call for reconciliation: with oneself, with others, and around a common humanity, a necessary precondition for valuing singularities. Celebrating GIBRALTAR twenty years after its release suggests today the importance and urgency of reconciliation: a dialogue of self with oneself and of self with others.