‘The killers I met in jail didn't scare me': singer Rokia Traoré on why prison was ‘a privilege'

The Guardian

26-02-2025

'It's been like a kind of military training,' says Rokia Traoré of the nine months she has just spent in European prisons. 'It was very hard. I was in a bad psychological state because I was separated from my children, but at the same time it was a kind of privilege because I was learning things it's not possible to learn without being in that situation. Everything is much more intense. Sharing a small space with someone – in a week you know more about them than their mother. You know everything: when she is happy, when she cries, when she goes to the toilet, when she has a shower. You see everything.'
Born and based in Mali, she is one of the most inventive and adventurous female artists in Africa; a singer who can switch from delicate acoustic styles to rock, powered by her bluesy electric guitar work. As well as putting out six studio albums she has toured the UK with the Africa Express project, collaborating with Damon Albarn, Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones. She has been an actor, performing, singing and writing the songs for Desdemona, a 2011 Toni Morrison-penned stage project in which Shakespeare's tragic heroine was given an African perspective. She has won awards including the French equivalent of a Grammy, and in 2015 she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
She seemed unstoppable, but she hasn't released an album since 2016's Né So. Her life was then transformed by a bitter custody battle with her former partner, the Belgian theatre director Jan Goossens, which led to her being jailed in France, Italy and Belgium. 'I was really sad,' she says of her time inside, speaking by phone from Paris, where she has been living since her release on 22 January. She sounds cheerful, and happy to talk at length, but is clearly angry about her experiences. 'It was difficult for me not knowing when it would all be over and I could be with my children again.'
The dispute with Goossens was over their daughter, who was born in Belgium in 2015 but went to Mali to live with her mother when she was four months old. In 2019, after the relationship had ended, Goossens demanded custody through a family court in Brussels and was granted it – though a court in Mali had already granted sole custody to Traoré. After she failed to produce her daughter in the Belgian court, a European arrest warrant was issued, accusing her of 'kidnapping and hostage taking'.
In March 2020, as she passed through Paris on her way to a concert at the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow, Traoré was arrested and jailed. She went on hunger strike in Fleury-Mérogis ( 'the worst prison in France', she says) but was released after six weeks because of the Covid pandemic. She was told to remain in France awaiting extradition to Belgium, but used her diplomatic passport (a common perk for African stars) to fly back to Mali on a private jet. Traoré said she was concerned about the welfare of her daughter, and her son from an earlier relationship, during the pandemic.
Back in Mali, she couldn't find work. The security situation in the country had deteriorated, with attacks by armed Islamic groups seriously damaging tourism and the local music scene, and a military government taking over in August 2020. Because of the kidnapping charge against her, international funding for her Fondation Passerelle cultural centre had stopped. 'So I had to use my own resources to help the few artists we have,' she says. 'I'm not one that spends much money. The most expensive thing in my life is my children's education.'
After four years in Africa she attempted to restart her career in Europe, although in October 2023 the Belgian court sentenced her to two years imprisonment in her absence. On 20 June last year she flew into Rome for a concert at the Colosseum, and was arrested, held in prison for eight months, then transferred to a jail in Brussels. Some of her fellow inmates there had been convicted of violent offences, but she says she 'wasn't fearful of someone who had killed someone. High-level criminals didn't scare me.'
Her release in January came after she signed a confidential agreement with her daughter's father, validated by the court. Later in the year, the court will reconsider the case – this time with Traoré and her lawyers present.
During Traoré's incarceration, her daughter was in Mali and had never been separated from her for so long. Her son was just starting university in Paris, but it was hard for Traoré to sort out payment for his accommodation. She survived, she said, by spending much of her time writing. Not songs, but a journal in which she chronicled the lives of the women who were locked up with her.
Traoré says she heard 'stories that were much more troubling than my stories. Of course I was worried about what was going to happen to me, but my fears were nothing compared with theirs. It left me time to think about their cases and forget about myself. In a way it made it easier to pass the time, writing about the others. Being in jail destroys you, and you don't understand what's happening to you, but I made it a constructive experience.'
She wrote about the way prison conditions varied across Europe. Italy was best, she says, not because of the state of the prisons but the attitude of the authorities. The guards were more respectful and lawyers talked openly about the large number of prison suicides, a subject discussed far less in France and Belgium. And in Italy, unlike Belgium, prisoners were allowed to draw up petitions over their grievances. She signed two, which were both successful: 'One of them was about missing medicines the prisoners needed, and the following week all the missing medicines were there.'
In Belgium, the prison was new and prisoners were allowed TV and a phone, 'which was very good', but there were complaints of long waits to see a doctor and many prisoners couldn't understand how to use the computerised appointment system. 'I made two demands for my cellmates, and neither had been answered by the time I left.'
All of which made her question what the prisons were hoping to achieve. 'There's no point in being in jail if it's not for the person to repair something inside, to understand that what they did was bad, and learn things that would be useful when they start a new life. But what happens in jails is not like that.' She says it seems as if 'people are there to be broken, to feel fear and pain and sadness. It's about so many things – except reconstruction'.
In all three prisons, she says, 'some women got very close to me and supported me and talked to me as a friend. And the few times I was really sad they supported me, saying, 'Don't cry. You are going to be out, because you are different from us, you did nothing. But please, when you are out, talk about us – about our needs to see our children, to be treated as normal people when we are out.''
So she is doing just that, planning a book and a stage show based on her prison experiences. The live project will be 'a piece of musical theatre, as I used to do in the past', and will include monologues taken from the book, along with new music. She says the music will encompass both the classical Mandinka music of west Africa and 'probably something more modern showing the connection between Mandinka, blues and classical styles'.
The approach sounds similar to that of Damou, her 2012 words-and-music project in which she demonstrated her compelling storytelling in a reworking of the Epic of Soundiata, a poem from Mali's ancient oral tradition. For the new project, she has yet to decide if she will perform all the spoken and musical passages herself or be joined by another musician. Titled À Huis Clos, the show will open in France, where Traoré has been discussing staging and choreography with Moïse Touré, director of the company Les Inachevés. An English version, titled In Camera, will follow.
But for all that she is keeping busy, and remains a well-loved and successful artist, Traoré says that, like other former prisoners, she is still anxious about her return to the outside world. 'Because even for me, it's hard to restart life after prison. It can't be the same as it was before. The fact that you have been in prison impacts on all your life.'
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email [e-mail] or [e-mail]. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org