Zouglou! A first draft

Zouglou! C.I (Cote D'Ivoire!) Present on the Ivorian music scene for almost 25 years now, Zouglou has certainly now imposed itself as a leading musical genre in Cote D’Ivoire contributing to the formation of the country’s cultural identity. Through its creative melodies, humorous lyrics and defiant allures, Zouglou slowly positioned itself as a medium through which marginalized youths have asserted themselves as a group, and have created a discursive space to communicate their demands for social inclusion and intergenerational justice to a national audience (Schumann, 2012).  Prior to my arrival in Abidjan, many skeptics had warned me that Zouglou had lost all its ground to newer genres such as Coupe Decale and Nigerian Afropop.  However, today as one tours Abidjan, it is all but impossible to miss the numerous Maquis proposing live Zouglou or Wôyô at least once a week. Every weekend, the sounds of Zouglou drums saturate the neighborhoods of the city as patrons gather in Maquis to socialize, drink and “liberate” (dancing in Zouglou terms). So how does Zouglou remain so popular to this day? What were the conditions of emergence of this music? And to what influences has Zouglou been subjected to produce its current form. In order to fairly elucidate these questions, it is critical to look at the origins of Zouglou, and analyze its trajectory through the Ivorian socio-political field throughout its years of existence.

Zouglou: Origins and meanings of the term.

To Bilé Didier, singer and dancer to whom some people attribute the paternity of Zouglou Music, Zouglou is the “expression of a set of behaviours and a way of thinking through gestures" (Adom, 2013).  In one of the first songs in the genre, “Gboglo Koffi  (The Hyena) (1991)”, Bilé Didier loads the Zouglou dance and genre with meaning  by describing a “philosophical dance”, a form of corporal expression for students and a way of “implore the Lord, and meditate so as to forget their problems”. Yet, research amongst scholars demonstrates that Zouglou itself may have existed in other forms and with other purposes prior to Bilé Didier’s opus. Indeed one has to go back some 20 years earlier to the days of inter-school sports competitions organized by the OISSU (Office Ivoirien des Sports Scolaires et Universitaires – Ivorian Office for School and University Sports) and their cheerleading orchestras known as Wôyô (according to Adom, this word means banter in Djula) or Ambiance Facile (Easy vibes) groups. Usually composed of a lead vocalist, some backup singers and some instrumentalists (a djembe drum or any surface that could be struck and a bell or a simple bottle), these student groups often toured the country with their sports teams and eulogized their own teams or denigrated their adversaries through their vibrant songs. In addition, these artists were also often called to perform at weddings, baptisms, funerals and other ceremonies due to their ability to captivate their public and the general popular nature of their songs. This attractiveness to the genre from the public could be justified by alluding to Wôyô’s sense of déjà-vu due to it being a music that heavily borrows from other styles (such as Aloukou in the Gouro ethnic group, or the Gbé Gbé amongst the Baoulé etc.) present in the diverse cultural landscape of Cote D’Ivoire (Cote D’Ivoire is made up of more than 65 ethnic groups, spread over at least 5 large cultural groups.). Consequently, Wôyô artists are often accomplished polyglots capable of fluently speaking in several other languages aside from French.

In the 1980s, several of these artists had completed secondary school and while the more fortunate found themselves studying at the prestigious University of Abidjan, a lot of them found themselves in situations that did not permit them to further their education. Oscillating between odd jobs and their performances, many of these artists kept to their Woyo traditions even as it was no longer practiced in the context of inter-school athletics. Yet, in to Bilé Didier and to many of the Zouglou connoisseurs that I have had to speak with, Zouglou is often described as not originally being a musical form, but rather being a set of specific dance steps.  Several theories and genesis stories exist regarding the conditions of emergence of this dance. One theory posits that these steps are attributed to a group of students namely Gogoua Christian aka Joe Christie, Bakary Ouédraogo aka Esprit Bakry and Bruno Porquet aka Opokou N’Ti (Lokpo, forthcoming) who may have developed their dance as a form of mimicry and/or mockery of a philosophy teacher who accompanied the delivery of his lectures with very articulated gestures. Another one claims that the origins of the Zouglou posture takes from the Baoule statues which represent a deity known as  Gboglo Koffi (or Gbokrokofi). Tchimou describes the statue as follows “Gboglo Koffi personifies the hyena. It is usually represented by a tall statue; it has a human body mounted with a hyena head. The knees are bent and the hands hold a small cup at chest height, to receive offerings.” (Tchimou, 1996).  It is worth noting that there is a striking resemblance between the Gboglo Koffi statues and the typical Zouglou stance (see illustration below).  

Moreover,  as pointed out by Tierou (2014), there is a close relationship that exists between sculpture and dance in African traditions. Tierou’s hypothesis alleges that all forms of African dance emanate from a basic somatic posture wherein the knees are flexed and the chest is more or less straight. Just like a Gbokrokofi statue, the Zouglou dancers keep their knees bent and their hands held out, hoping and imploring the Lord, searching for a means to better his/her situation. The group the Parents du Campus explains:

First of all, Zouglou is a dance of misery, a dance of hardship. When dancing, one lifts the arms towards the sky; it means that the student is imploring God, asking for a blessing from our Lord because he has many problems. When we bring down our arms toward the bottom, it’s to show that the student after all of his studies, is blocked, because he cannot find any work. (Man and Kraidy 1991: 10 – cited by Schumann, 2012)

Would it be too far-fetched to claim that a parallel exists between Zouglou and these Baoule sculptures? Furthermore, it would be worthy to also outline that in addition to being a Baoule deity, Gboglo Koffi is also a prominent villain archetype in Akan folklore. Using such figures to deliver social commentary was already present in the songs of the celebrated Ivorian group Woya who had previously recorded a song named Kouakou Ananze (Kweku Anantse). In this sense, it is as if artists named their songs after familiar folk figures such as the hyena (Gboglo Koffi) or the spider (Kweku Anantse) to buttress the function of these characters as vectors to educate and provide social commentary.

Nevertheless, my exploration thus far has yet to reveal any real meaning associated with the word Zouglou. According to the artist Poignon (on the precursors of the genre), the word Zouglou was simply an onomatopoeic interjection void of any real meaning.  Yet, with time it appears that the term has been inflicted with meaning. As Soro Solo hypothesizes, Zouglou is a Baoule term that means “garbage”, “junk” or “rubbish”.  This has been confirmed by another informant who adds that Zouglou is a pejorative term in the Baoule language which refers to something that may be “dislocated” or “strange”. A strange dance that Joe Christie and his friends used to practice with its jerky motions and peculiar steps, unlike anything that anyone had previously seen. At a party on campus, seeing his friend Joe Christy and his odd dancing form, Opoku Nti mocked him claiming that he was “dancing in Zouglou” (Adom, 2014).  The term caught on and with a slow but sure evolution and this dance became engrafted to the Wôyô rhythmic basis to form this new “philosophical” genre. Many observers have read this form of corporal expression along with the themes articulated in Zouglou music as a direct reflection of the condition of Ivorian society during the 1990s. In this sense, it is important to note that in Zouglou (and in Coupe Decale as we will later see), the nexus between dance and music is very present and intermingled – yet not inseparable as it is often claimed is the case with African music/dance (See Tierou, 2014). My informants have constantly affirmed that more than anything else, they listened to Zouglou music thus implying a certain passivity, but also a form of maturation of the genre. On a rainy evening in Paris, Yode and Siro told me “You see, today if you go to Abidjan you will notice that it is Zouglou that people play to attract people to their maquis. And today on the Ivorian market, it is only Zouglou albums that still sell” (Personal communication, 2015). My own observation of live Zouglou in spaces such as the Maquis (open air restaurants) and Bars Climatisés (air-conditioned bars) of Abidjan have revealed that unlike Coupe-Decale, these spaces are frequented by people who have, to borrow Borrow Koenig’s terms, graduated from the social cadet status. It is through backing from this social class that artists ensure their survival today by means of live performance.

Much like its fan base, Zouglou has also established itself today as a “mature” music genre still expressing the distresses of a marginalized youth, but surviving mainly through the patronage of a bourgeois sphere which has managed to establish and assert itself in Ivorian society.