Louis Degnan Samka made his wish come true: to produce a musical short film, called Fancy, in tribute to the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, in which he performs and composes the music. We met him nine years ago at his mother’s house, where he lived at the time, a few days after the attacks. During the terrorist attack that caused the death of 130 people, he was working in Bataclan Cafe. He had been shot in the left thigh, which fortunately missed the femoral artery. He underwent surgery the next day at the Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris, and walked again five days later. “I was very lucky, I have a lucky star”tells us today.
Although he hesitates to talk about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he suffered from“passive depression, anxiety” shortly after the attacks. “I began to leave the house less, to see fewer people, sometimes with visions of scenes in which we were shooting each other, but without really realizing that it was not going wellsays Louis Degnan Samka. It is a form of combat in which we are very disconnected from reality, outside of time. Most of all, we wonder why this happened to us. » His mother gave him the contact of a psychologist. Therapy begins in 2020. The term PTSD is coined.
“It was difficult for me to consider myself a victim, I was in a kind of denial, more in survivor mode. » His psychologist and his lawyer encouraged him to seek compensation. It’s not that simple. “Every year they invite us to attend the commemorations, but at the same time I had to have several expert reports to obtain compensation, because my injuries were not physical but psychological…”observes the artist.
“I am one of them and I will not forget them”
The trial for the November 13 attacks, which took place between September 2021 and June 2022, helped him. If you initially hesitated to testify, “The fact of externalizing, of addressing the terrorists… helped me and allowed me to really recognize the fact of having been a victim”. Testifying can help some survivors better understand what they experienced.
Composing, creating… without a doubt, music has it rescued. He says that he already had this relationship with rap before the attacks, “a means of expression, a means also of existing”. In 2015, He signed to an independent label, then began producing music and launched his own label. “Despite everything, I was a little in survival mode, a little suffering”recognizes the thirty-year-old. Reaching the final of the 2017 Emergenza Festival, held at the Bataclan, is a turning point for him.
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