Coupe Decale – Simply Party Music?

For over 10 years now, dancers from all over French-speaking Africa and the Diaspora have been wiggling and strutting to the energetic sounds of Coupe Decale music. While the origins of this music are widely debated and its paternity contested amongst various individuals, it is likely that it originated in the discotheques of the Parisian suburbia – more particularly in Montreuil. In 2002, Douk Saga popularized this music and exported it back to Abidjan under the guidance of David Monsoh, his manager at the time. The success was immediate and quite extraordinary. In the hands of Ivorian DJs and singers, Coupe Decale production became a resolutely local affair and reached all corners of the country. Originally in Ivory Coast, but then all over Africa and the French overseas departments, the spark of Coupe Decale ignited a powder keg that spawned a culture that endures even today.

This success however, raises some pertinent questions. This is because Coupe Decale’s phenomenal rise to fame was conterminous with the worst political crisis Ivory Coast had ever come to face. In addition Coupe Decale is a genre that is for many considered a musique d’ambience (party music), and considering the period that fostered its emergence, strikingly apolitical. Why did such joyous sounds emanate from a country that was so evidently facing a debilitating crisis? What messages did this music try to convey, and how were these received, interpreted and redistributed? Simply put, what factors contributed to Coupe Decale’s success first in Cote D’Ivoire, but also in other places; and why is this music still popular today? While these questions may appear deceptively simple, attempting to search for their answers is arduous and often raises additional questions. Part of the reason is because semiotically, Coupe Decale’s messages are encoded in such ambivalent ways that their interpretation is often only suggestive of meanings, rather than definitive answers. Moreover, Coupe Decale cannot be understood, let alone analyzed without fully situating it within a complex macro-context. Thus to understand Coupe Decale one has to understand Ivorian music, and to understand Ivorian Music it is important to have a sensibility about African music but also black music in general.

While the scholarship on African music and its relation to politics is extensive, there has been more limited research undertaken on the subject of Ivorian popular music and even less on Coupe Decale. Moreover, much of the study on Coupe Decale has tended to characterize it as simply party music void of ostensible political messages. In addition the dubious origins of the genre, which many people believe was originated by individuals engaged in fraudulent activities have made Coupe Decale a fairly controversial affair from its onset. Understanding and analyzing Coupe Decale must then first begin with a general semantic and textual analysis of the songs, extend to other implicit codes that the music may transport, and finally position this music within its social field.

Coupe Decale – Playing with Meanings?

What do the words Coupe Decale mean? A literal translation from the French language would render “Cut” and “Shift”. However in Coupe Decale culture, it is often the case that appearances are deceiving and consequently require us to seek meanings elsewhere. One likely place would be in Nouchi, Ivory Coast’s own brand of French. Nouchi is an urban vernacular created and spoken in the streets of Abidjan characterized by “loans form major national languages, French as well as English. Its vocabulary is also constructed from onomatopoeia, metaphors and feeds on news and social phenomena. Thus, in order to define or translate a word, it is often necessary to restate all the history associated with the word in question!” (Solo, xxxx). In Nouchi “Couper” does not mean “to cut” as it does in standard French, but rather to steal or to deceive (i.e. from the French idiom faire un coup) and the verb “Decaler” could mean to disappear or run away. Thus, Coupe Decale could be said to be a music promoting deceit and escape. But whom was this music purporting to deceive? And what were these actors attempting to break away from?  

A popular answer comes from Domenic Kollaghen. “Coupe Decale then celebrates those who went abroad to unscrupulously make gains and returned home to travailler (literally: work). Travailler here means partying in a nightclub, donning fashionable clothes, offering champagne and distributing cash to prove one’s success.” (Kollaghen xxxx) This negative connotation presented by Kollaghen in this description is not necessarily exclusive, but rather reflects a popular and perfectly reasonable interpretation given to the words “Coupe Decale” in Ivory Coast and elsewhere. However, it would be unjust to settle for this meaning without carrying out further inquiry.

Hence, another reading of Coupe Decale asserts that it was inspired by the Akoupe ethnicity of Cote D’Ivoire who had a very peculiar dancing style. This dance executed with cutlasses apparently bears some resemblance to the original form of Coupe Decale. Yaya Kone, among others, has rejected this claim as he states that this hypothesis is not very plausible...since investigations have demonstrated that Coupe Decale has a stronger affiliation with contemporary Congolese dances than with traditional Ivorian dances. This interpretation, probably constructed a posteriori, was in all probability an attempt to save Coupe Decale from all the bad publicity it was receiving.

A third avenue should be explored if one is to fully exhaust all fields of inquiry related to the analysis of the word Coupe Decale. That is literal translation of corporal language. In its original form, Coupe Decale’s choreography consisted of diagonally slicing the air with the edge of the hand (the “Cut/Couper” motion), and throwing one’s leg back (the “Shift/Decaler” motion).  When asked about the origins of the genre, Lino Versace an important precursor of the movement recalls:

In 2001 I met Douk Saga (RIP). I already knew Boro Sanguy and we often met together for drinks from time to time. We invented this joyful and cheerful dance step because of the stress we faced during the week. On the weekend, we had to relax and have fun. We met in Night Clubs and enjoyed ourselves.

We had not really given name to this dance. We called it "Coupé Cloué" (Cut Nailed) because the step seemed a little bit stationary. Then we were inspired just like that, in his own Coupé Cloué, Douk Saga enjoyed shifting around so we called it Coupé Decalé. Then each of us brought a personal touch, and some imagination. Derivatives came about such as s’envoler (flying) planer (hovering), chinois (Chinese) etc. Then the DJs followed. DJ Jacob went to Abidjan at the time (he was a DJ at Atlantis Night Club) and went to the studio to record an album that sold well. Douk Saga followed. (Grioo, 2009)

My own inquiries amongst various actors who contributed to the genesis of the music imply that the words “Couper” and “Decaler” were simply ways to articulate Douk Saga’s particular dance style. However my interlocutor also recalled that Douk Saga was not trained as a musician or dancer, and even suffered from a throat infection. This reflected into the very particular brand of call-and-response music that characterized early Coupe Decale music. In his original manager’s words, “Douk Saga was a businessman”.

The deliberate ambiguity with Douk Saga’s producer approached the question of his profession prior to being an artist sends us back to the original point. Does Coupe Decale really celebrate as Kollaghen argues, the unscrupulous gains of Ivorian/African youths gone derrière l’eau (literally: across the water, but in Nouchi this means traveling to Europe or North America) and their glorious return back home characterized by ostentatious displays of dubiously acquired wealth? Or is it simply a name to which an inaccurate interpretation has been linked; an interpretation poles apart from the original signification.

It is my thesis that Coupe Decale exploits a culture of clever polysemy that is characteristic of African modes of communication. As such, the meaning of Coupe Decale could arguably be effectively present in all of the evidence presented in this text, while at the same time not mean any of those things at all. Coupe Decale’s meaning is constantly reinvented and re-appropriated by its actors. Nuggets of meanings only become apparent once we analyze the messages encoded in the lyrics, dances, fashion, and discourses of its actors. Such codes could hint that despite its apparent lack of lyrical complexity, Coupe Decale could still be an unidentified political object as described by Denis Constant Martin (Martin, 1989). Understanding these codes holistically would then be paramount to gaining a clear understanding of the true importance of this music in the Ivorian/African socio-political landscape.

Coupe-Decale Liege: Reflections on my first couch-surfing experience.

Reflections on a couch-surfing experience.

Upon first meeting my Parisian friend at Montmartre, his interest in my project and general candidness immediately struck me. While I had hoped that we would initially meet in a bar or coffee shop to break the ice, he invited me to his apartment. It was a fabulous place located at the top of the Montmartre steps overlooking the entire city. From his window,  Paris shone bathed in a rare winter afternoon sun. Sam sat me at a table buried in books on subjects ranging from the origins of Hip Life in Ghana to political modes of expressions in African popular culture. At this point, my conviction that Sam and I would get along was confirmed. Hours flew by as we discussed our perceptions of the Coupe Decale movement and exchanged views on the coded forms of expressions embedded in the music. Sam, like many scholars who had gotten too close to this movement, had a very ambivalent view. Torn between his general love for African music and the dubious, rather criminal origins of Coupe Decale – I had the impression that his research had left him with a rather bitter taste in his mouth. Nonetheless, he still proved to be an excellent resource for general fieldwork advice, contacts and a myriad of lessons learned.

During the closing phases of our discussion, we realized that we were both headed to Amsterdam soon. Moreover it happened that Sam was also interested in watching a show called “Coupe Decale” that was soon going to stop in Liege, Belgium. Sam had actually forged a close relationship with James Carles (the show’s director and famous dancer/choreographer in Toulouse), who had given Sam some guidance during his own research. Quickly, it was decided that we’d go to Belgium together to watch the show. Since my original base in Belgium was at my cousin’s who lived in Antwerp, hundreds of kilometers away from Liege, catching a midnight train back to Antwerp after the show did not seem like a feasible option. After some rather rocky logistical issues, Sam arranged for us to stay with a Couchsurfing host who had a place in Liege.

I arrived in Liege a couple of hours before Sam as I had scheduled an interview with the show’s director. After some frustrating moments spent getting lost and hopping from bus to bus, I finally found James’ hotel. A few moments after I was announced, James came down and led me to the hotel bar. The interview went fast and was fairly unfocused. I kept fumbling my papers and struggled to keep my questions open-ended. Nonetheless James, perhaps sensing my lack of experience, was very patient and provided me with lengthy and very detailed responses – sometimes even answering questions that I had not explicitly formulated.  

Our meeting was cut short when my friend Sam called to announce that he had just arrived in Liege and that we were invited for an 8 pm dinner at our Couchsurfing host’s. I left James’ hotel for the address Sam provided me and found myself in an older neighbourhood of Liege. During our initial communication, Sam had warned me that we would be staying in a studio apartment where our host had been generous enough to offer us a mattress on the floor. I was however surprised to find that we were actually being lodged in a 3 floor townhouse where we actually had a separate (but shared) room.

Dinner with our host went well. The conversation revolved mostly around our shared experiences of various cultures and our individual trajectories. She was fascinated with our story and curious to find out how Sam and I went from complete strangers to travel mates in such a short time.  We did our best to tell her about our common interest in Coupe Decale, our relationship with James Carles and our interest in the following day’s show. She kept an open mind and a lot of patience as Sam and I went back and forth arguing as to what we thought were the true ideologies behind the movement. Before bidding her goodnight, we invited her to see the show with us the following day so she could see for herself what the fuss was all about. Sam and I finished the night in a Congolese bar bordering the Meuse, sharing research findings and opinions while sipping on cheap Belgian beer.

Until this experience, I had always considered Couchsurfing  a “dangerous practice”. It was hard for me to conceive that one could open his/her doors to complete strangers exposing themselves to all sorts of potential catastrophes. However, this experience proved to me that this perception could not be further from the truth. People like Sam and our host, made the experience thoroughly enjoyable. I learned about another culture, exchanged ideas and shared a genuine experience with other fellow human beings. Life should not be lived fearing interactions with our neighbours, it should be lived to embrace differences and accept others for what they are. I am, of course, not arguing for recklessness or imprudence since I am well aware that not everyone out there has the noblest of intentions. However, if we decide to somewhat lower our guard we might discover how sublime other individuals can be, and remind ourselves of our own ability for true and disinterested kindness.