Archie Shepp's Message from Paris

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - Archie Shepp's Message from Paris

Saxophonist Archie Shepp on life as a black American in Paris.

Saxophonist Archie Shepp on life as a black American in Paris before and since the Charlie Hebdo attack. From 2015.

The American saxophonist Archie Shepp has spent much of his life in Paris.

So it was there in January 2015 that he and his French wife heard about the shootings at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. They had friends among the staff and the killings shocked them deeply.

As a foreigner in France, an artist with long-standing political convictions and a man who’d grown up among the violence and prejudice of a black ghetto in the States, Archie knows - on a profound personal level - the mechanisms of anger, fear and frustration.

He knows the realities of segregation, the feeling of being trapped in a deprived neighbourhood and the difficulties of not seeing a way out. For Archie, education and music offered an escape route. 

Looking through the lens of his own experiences, he considers life now in his adopted city of Paris.

Producer: Rikke Houd

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in July 2015.

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