'They don't Care About us': Representing the Black Postcolonial Subject through the Appropriation of Michael Jackson in Gabonese Urban Dance

This essay recounts both the intertwined history of the hip-hop appropriation and the identification to the figure of Michael Jackson in Gabon, from the 1980s to nowadays. It questions how transatlantic musical dialogues have provided the African youth with a way of representing a black subject freed from (post)colonial complexes. Drawing on historical and ethnographic data, this paper focuses on several imitators of Michael Jackson, and mainly on the case of Michael Anicet, a dancer who built his career and his fame on the imitation of Michael Jackson choreographies. It describes his pathway, his performances and how he transformed Michael Jackson's dances in order to 'gabonize' it, focusing mainly on his reception and appropriation of the song and choreography of the track 'They don't care about us'. This essay finally proves how the identification to global black icons has constituted the lever for an identity construction which combines nationalist claims and connections with a transnational blackness.