VIDEO. Opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Aya Nakamura ignites the opening ceremony in a duo with the Republican Guard
|The French singing star warmed up the atmosphere. – Screenshot
Aya Nakamura, the most listened to French-speaking singer in the world, performed, dressed all in gold, at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday, while the presence of the Franco-Malian artist, leaked in the press in the spring, has raised the hackles of the French far right.
Blonde for the occasion, wearing a gold feathered dress with gladiator sandals, she sang alongside the Republican Guard and ended her performance standing at attention, like her dancers. Aya Nakamura sang a medley of two of her hits, “Pookie”, “Djadja”, and a standard by Charles Aznavour, “For me Formidable”, whose centenary of his birth is being celebrated this year.
Aya Nakamura for Olympic Games !!!!! #ceremoniedouverture #OpeningCeremony #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/UvtJHBxwsu
— aya base. (@nakamura_base) July 26, 2024
Nothing surprising. “Rappers find what they are looking for at Charles Aznavour's,” assured one of the singer's children, Nicolas, in May. “This is Paris, not the Bamako market!”, we read in March on a banner from an identity group relayed on social networks.
Stronger than the controversies
An investigation for incitement to hatred online was opened, with six people identified and material seized by the French justice system in early July. At the height of the attacks from the far right, Alain Veille, head of Warner Music France, defended the artist on social media:
“Great artists shake up the codes, disturb, and shape culture. Hate and racism will not stop us”. And to roll out the figures of her success: "7 billion streams worldwide, for 5 years the most streamed French female artist in the world, 3 Accor Arena (large concert hall in Paris, Editor's note) filled in 20 minutes".
"Aya Nakamura is in the top sales of 46 countries, she is an instrument of the “soft power” French and the unworthy controversies will not change anything", also insisted Alexandre Lasch, head of the National Union of the phonographic edition (Snep), during an event of this representative body in front of professionals in the sector