AC1.

382 - Sat 10h20m

Unit4 - Reading

P. 43

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Assane N'Diaye, 19, loves hip-hop
music. Before he left his Senegalese
village to work as a DJ in Dakar, he
was a fisherman, just like his father,
like is father's father before him. Tall
lean, with a muscular build and a
handsome face, Assane became a
popular DJ, but the equipment he used
was borrowed, and when his friend
took it back he returned to his village
of Toubab Dialaw. The villge is located
about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of
Dakar — marked by a huge boulder,
perhaps
40 feet (12 meters) high — facing the
Atlantic Ocean.
In the shadow of this Great Rock,
Assane has built a small restaurant,
Chez Las, decorated with hundreds of
seashell. It is where he lives his hip-
hop dream. At
night, he and his brother and cousin
sit by the Great Rock and face the sea.
They write rap songs about their
difficult lives as village fishermen, and
about being poor; watching their town
get crowded with rich Dakarians and
even richer French. And they write
about their relatives who leave in the
morning and never return,

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losing their lives in the dangerous
seas.
Their dream, of course is to make
record. They have their own demo,
their own logo, and their own rap
group name, Salam T. D. (which stands
for Toubab Dialaw). But rap music
represents a bigger dream: a better
life. “We want money to help our
parents” Assane says over dinner. “We
watch our mothers boil water to cook
and have nothing to put in the pot”
He fingers" his food lightly. “Rap
doesn't belong to American culture”
he says “It belongs here. It has always
existed here, because of our pain and
our hardships and our suffering”

After a dinner of chicken and rice,

Assane says something in Wolof to the
others. Silently and carefully they take
every bit of the leftover dinner — the
half-eaten bread, rice, pieces of
chicken, the chicken bones — and
dump them into a plastic bag to give
to the children in the village. They
silently rise from the table, walk
outside, and head out to the darkened
village, holding on to that bag as
though it held money.

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