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.