Faced with criticism, Aya Nakamura counterattacks

After the controversy surrounding Emmanuel Macron’s choice to have Aya Nakamura sing at the opening of the Olympic Games, the singer is getting annoyed.

Silent since the start of the controversy, Aya Nakamura is stepping up to the plate. Since the revelation, in L’Express, of a choice that Emmanuel Macron would have made to see the singer perform during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games this summer, criticism has been raining down on social networks or in the media. Worse, this weekend, the identity collective Les Natifs, which describes itself as “proud and rooted young Parisians”, installed a banner in Paris, where it was written: “There’s no way Aya. Here it is Paris, not the Bamako market.”

What Aya Nakamura herself responded on social networks, coming out of her reserve: “You can be racist but not deaf. That’s what hurts you! I’m becoming a number 1 state subject in debates etc. but what do I owe you for real? Kedal (sic).”

Faced with attacks from the Natives, several artists took up the defense of Aya Nakamura. “That’s why we’re late here. You’re lynching the biggest artist in the country with CM1 arguments… It wasn’t even a fight but she has to sing, we’re going to support it”, writes for example the rapper Dadju on X (formerly Twitter). And the controversy escalates to politicians: “The violence of racist and sexist remarks against Aya Nakamura on the fallacious pretext of not appreciating her artistically borders on national harassment against a young woman! And racism is not an opinion it is a crime,” writes Marlène Schiappa.

The elected environmentalist Sandrine Rousseau concludes: “The racism behind the refusal of Aya Nakamura is indecent. She is one of the best, an international Queen. And it will give another image of France. An image of an open and open France. tolerant. Not that of little feet. Strongly.”