Sister Fa

{{short description|Singer and activist}}{{Infobox musical artist

| image = Sister fa.jpg

| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1982}}

| birth_place = Dakar, Senegal

| genre = Rap

| years_active =

}}

Sister Fa (real name Fatou Diatta, born 1982 in Dakar, Senegal){{cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/16/sister-fa-rapper-genital-cutting-senegal | title=Sister Fa: African rapper with a cause | work=The Guardian | date=16 February 2013 | accessdate=30 March 2016 | author=Mossman, Kate}} is a Senegalese rapper and anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) activist.

Career

Diatta began her career as a rapper in 2000, when she made her first demo tape.{{cite web | url=http://www.sisterfa.com/biography/ | title=Biography | work=Sisterfa.com | accessdate=30 March 2016 | archive-date=18 July 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170718125405/http://www.sisterfa.com/biography/ | url-status=dead }} The following year, she performed at the Senegal Hip Hop Awards.{{cite web | url=http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/10/fgm-senegal-sister-fa-151015113021192.html | title=Waging a lyrical war against FGM | work=Al Jazeera | date=15 October 2015 | accessdate=30 March 2016 | author=van der Zee, Renate}} In 2005, she released her first album, Hip Hop Yaw Law Fal. In 2008, she toured Senegal to raise awareness of the problem of FGM. In 2009, she released her international debut album Sarabah: Tales From the Flipside of Paradise. 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.{{cite web | url=http://sarabahdocumentary.com/film/ | title=About Sarabah | accessdate=30 March 2016}}

Critical reception

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."{{cite web | url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/ngrg | title=Sarabah Tales From the Flipside of Paradise Review | work=BBC Music | accessdate=30 March 2016 | author=Lusk, Jon}} 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."{{cite web | url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/5562175/Sister-Fa-Sarabah-CD-review.html | title=Sister Fa: Sarabah, CD review | work=The Telegraph | date=22 July 2009 | accessdate=30 March 2016 | author=Hudson, Mark}} 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."{{cite web | url=http://www.allmusic.com/album/release/sarabah-tales-from-the-flipside-of-paradise-mr0001037128 | title=Sarabah Review | work=Allmusic | accessdate=30 March 2016 | author=Anderson, Rick}}

Personal life

Diatta was subjected to FGM when she was a child. She met Lucas May, an Austrian ethologist, in 2005; they married within a week. In March 2006, she and her husband moved to Berlin.

References