« Mais ce n’est pas de la musique kanak ça ! » La démarche juvénile d’affirmation d’une musique identitaire kanak (1982-1986)

Abstract

« Mais ce n’est pas de la musique kanak ça ! ». The Youth Process of Affirming a Kanak Identity Music (1982-1986)

Inaugurating new perspectives on the time known as «kanak awakening» (Chappel 2013), this paper is aimed at focusing on the evolution of the kaneka, a musical, artistic and intellectual movement born in the 1980s, during the struggle for recognition of the kanak identity. The article, sourcing from a major research work still in progress, retraces the context in which the kaneka took place, shedding light on its protagonists and the different relationships established, drawing upon the original work of the «équipe du patrimoine»: a group composed by young local fieldworkers, kanak activists, ethnomusicologists, ethnographers, all brought together by the independentist political agenda. It is indeed from an attentive analysis of this historical period that it’s possible to discern one of the specificities of the Kanak culture management: a complex “knowledge circulation apparatus” aimed at re-animating the political consciousness through the transmission of local knowledge. As the paper seeks to highlight, kanak cultural policies were in fact the result of a dialogue between an “exceptional” generation returning from the “metropole” and the experience and creativity of young people actively engaged on the field. It is indeed in this moment of exchange and shared experience that the famous Canala meeting gave rise, in 1986, to kaneka.