A member of Switzerland’s French-speaking free churches has turned to slam poetry as a way of saying the world in language that is both accessible and sensitive. Cédric Chanson, who performs under the name Cézig, is profiled by La FREE, the federation of French-speaking free evangelical churches in Switzerland, in an article republished from the broadcaster Radio R.
Chanson had written texts and poems for years before he encountered slam, but hearing the work of Lady Slamenco, a young slam artist who has since died, he described as something close to a revelation: “words that are well said, well arranged, everyday words that make poetry very accessible”. He began to sharpen his writing against situations ranging from the comic to the painful. In one piece, “La langue”, he sets out the contract he has made with language — it may say whatever it likes on one condition: “that it be beautiful, just and true, without compromise”. He admits the rule does not always hold, but describes himself as following the one “who knows the words of love in every language” — God.
Several years spent in Africa with his family, Chanson says, brought him closer to that God and loosened a very Western, very Swiss notion of a God placed at the service of personal fulfilment and comfort. That time, he says, returned him to essentials, a theme that runs through a further slam, “Aux grandes petites héroïnes de l’Afrique”. The profile appears in La FREE’s news section, which carries reporting and interviews from across the federation’s congregations.
(Originally published in French. Summary translated by CC / Connexion.)
Source: LaFree / Fédération Romande d’Églises Évangéliques — lafree.ch/cedric-chanson-cezig-slameur-des-essentiels
