From the Alleyways to Memory

There are identities that are never questioned.

And then there are identities you have to learn to hold yourself.

In this episode of KAMA, Aly Ndiaye, also known as Webster, speaks about memory, belonging, hip-hop, and what it means to grow up between worlds.

But the conversation begins somewhere much simpler.

In the alleyways of Quebec City.

With snowbanks.
Shortcuts.
Children playing outside for hours.

An ordinary childhood.

And yet…

The first difference

Sometimes, the first awareness of difference arrives quietly.

At school.
In a game.
In the role you are given without choosing it.

Aly speaks about playing Star Wars as a child.

The blond boy was Luke Skywalker.
The brunet was Han Solo.

And he was always assigned Darth Vader.

Because he was Black.

A small moment.
But also the beginning of something larger:

The realization that other people already see you through a lens you did not choose.

The first mirror

Later, hip-hop becomes another kind of discovery.

Not only music.

Recognition.

For the first time, he sees people who resemble him represented differently:
creative,
articulate,
confident,
visible.

And maybe that is what art sometimes does first.

Not inspire us.

Reveal us to ourselves.

A history that was never taught

At the same time, another question begins to emerge.

Why did he know so much about African American history…
but almost nothing about Black history in Quebec?

So he searches.

And eventually, he discovers something larger than himself:

A Black presence in Quebec that has existed for centuries,
yet remains absent from most conversations.

What follows is not only research.

It becomes transmission.

Not half of one thing

One of the most moving parts of the conversation arrives when Aly speaks about identity and métissage.

About being told to “go back where you came from” here…
while being perceived as an outsider somewhere else.

And how, eventually, he had to intellectualize who he was in order to live in peace with it.

Not half Black and half Quebecois.
Not half Senegalese and half something else.

But fully all of it.

Fully Black.
Fully Quebecois.
Fully Senegalese.

Without asking permission.

Person by person

What stayed with me most was his relationship to transmission.

There is no grand performance in the way he speaks about it.

Only consistency.

The desire to pass something forward.
To give younger generations access to something he himself did not receive.

And maybe that is what this episode quietly becomes:

A conversation about memory,
but also about reclamation.

About learning that understanding where you come from can sometimes help you stand more fully in who you are.

And you…

Have you ever had to consciously piece together your own identity in order to feel at peace with it?