Sister Fa | |
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![]() Sister Fa in 2010 | |
Background information | |
Birth name | Fatou Diatta |
Born | 1982 (age 42–43) Dakar, Senegal |
Genres | Rap |
Sister Fa (real name Fatou Diatta, born 1982 in Dakar, Senegal) [1] is a Senegalese rapper and anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) activist.
Diatta began her career as a rapper in 2000, when she made her first demo tape. [2] The following year, she performed at the Senegal Hip Hop Awards. [3] In 2005, she released her first album, Hip Hop Yaw Law Fal. [3] In 2008, she toured Senegal to raise awareness of the problem of FGM. [3] In 2009, she released her international debut album Sarabah: Tales From the Flipside of Paradise. [2] In 2011, Sarabah, a documentary about Diatta's tour Education Sans Excision (French for Education without Cutting), premiered at the human rights festival Movies That Matter. [1] [4]
Sarabah: Tales From the Flipside of Paradise received a lukewarm review from Jon Lusk of the BBC, who wrote that "too much of the album consists of fairly pedestrian or annoyingly sing-songy melodies that echo playground chants (like Poum Poum Pa) or seem transparently aimed at the ring tone market." [5] In The Daily Telegraph , Mark Hudson gave the album 3 out of 5 stars and wrote that Diatta "pits her gutsy verbalising against exquisite traditional melodies on this well-crafted debut." [6] Rick Anderson reviewed the album for Allmusic, concluding that "It's rare that a hip-hop artist balances lightness, seriousness, funk, and message as successfully as this one does -- especially the first time out." [7]
Diatta was subjected to FGM when she was a child. [3] She met Lucas May, an Austrian ethologist, in 2005; they married within a week. [3] In March 2006, she and her husband moved to Berlin. [2]