ZOUK: THE MUSIC OF THE FRENCH ANTILLES
by Maamuudu Joob
Zouk music has been the 1980's most copied new rhythm. Zouk is a creole word
that used to be slang for "party" which greatly replaced live music in the 1960's in French
Antilles. This music and dance was popularized by Kassav' which used to be identified to
it. Zouk influence has been felt in Brazilian lambada and other Caribbean styles like
Merengue and Soca. Its influence has been greatest in Paris with the two founders Jacob
Desvarieux and Pierre Edouard Decimus. Like most Caribbean styles, it owes much to
Africa. Records on sale in Paris with names like Makozouk and Soukouzouk indicate
that in France, as well as in Africa, zouk has been absorbed as if it were another branch
of the great african music tree.
The most striking elements in zouk musical mixture are the basic African
instruments. These elements come from a traditional drum and vocal music called gwo
ka, performed in the hills of Guadeloupe at festival times. They are made of local wood to
a west African design and a gwo ka unit can consist up to ten drums. At Carnival times in
Guadeloupe, dozens of gwo ka units tour the island, playing music improvisation much
like the Samba schools in Brazil. It is a participative type of music with people grabbing
any persuasive instrument they can find and joining in. The vocal sound of gwo ka is rather
like the South African township gospel of Ladysmith Black Manbazo. It looks like this
vocal swimmed from slavery days in the hills of Guadeloupe, where Edouard Boisdur and
Eugene Mona are famous exponents of the style.
The roots music of Martinique called Chouval Bwa also fed into Kassav's zouk
development. Like gwo ka, it is also performed at carnivals and fairs. The rhythmic
nucleus of Chouval Bwa orchestra is provided by the tambour drums. The lead drum is a
huge one called bel-air. Other musicians play timbales and chachas (gourds filled with
stones) or strike large chunks of bamboo known as ti bois. The player sing the chorus,
responding to the calls of the leader, often the bel-air percussionist. The most famous
chouval bwa orchestra is Marce et Tumpak. Their album "Zouk Chouv" is an example of
zouk roots packed with exciting drumming and rhythm.
Martinique has also its own form of folk jazz " biguine" which contributed to the
development of zouk. The biguine dance has been around for 300 hundred years. It is a
combination of African style with French ballroom steps. Originally, it started as string
band evolving around guitar and banjo chords. Later on , it borrowed percussion from
chouval bwa, then added clarinets and violins. In the 1930's, Martiniquais soldiers in
Wolrd War I brought biguine to the Metropole. Le Bal Negre became very popular in
Parisian dancehalls, spread mainly by Alexandre Stellio's biguine band "L'Orchestre
Antillais".
The main source of zouk music is cadence which dominated the Antilles music
scene and was picked up by the haitians. Cadence was a fusion of sounds from biguine,
chouval bwa and gwo ka. The cadence craze started in the early 1960's and was mostly
exploited by the haitians, adding swings from their own compas and trinidadian calypso.
During this era, Haitians orchestras dominated the Caribbean music platform. In the
1970's, however, Antiilian bands innovated cadence to start its metamorphose into what
is currently known as zouk. The transition actually started in the late 1960's with a
Dominican band called Exile One, settled in Guadeloupe due to the lack of recording
studios back home. Exile One created its own repertoire putting together Soul, Rock,
Latin and Afrofunk of Manu Dibango. Gordon Henderson, Exile One's lead singer, joined
forces with the famous cadence band called the Vikings of Guadeloupe. The vikings are
considered the precurseurs of Kassav' whose co-founder Pierre Edouard Decimus was
a member of the group. In the neighboring island, the Martiniquans Vikings released an
album in the late 1970's called "Djouk, Djouk".
In 1978, Pierre Edouard Decimus relocated in Paris after a successful career in the
French Antilles. Pierre Edouard Decimus was on the verge of retirement from the music
business until he and his brother Georges Decimus met fellow Guadeloupean Jacob
Desvarieux, a popular guitarist/songwriter kwown in Paris as a studio wizard. The
surroundings of the Paris music recording technology gave him the idea of making "just
one more record". Subsequently, Pierre Edouard Decimus, his brother, and Jacob
Desvarieux pulled together a team of Paris-based Antilles musicians and created a
group named Kassav' and a new sound called zouk. The original Kassav' was all
guadeloupean but was later joined by martiniquans Jean-Claude Naimro, Claude Vamur,
Jean-Phillipe Marthely and Patrick Saint-Eloi. Kassav' created its own style by
introducing an eleven-piece gwo ka unit and two lead singers. Originally, Kassav' style
had a certain political dimension. Their famous song "zouk-la se sel medikaman nou ni"
implied that zouk constituted a banner for the cultural unity of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
However, The message did not quite get accross as other zouk musicians did not follow.
Towards the end of 1980's, competition from other zouk bands which decreased
the dominance of Kassav'. To stay at the top, Kassav' intitiated and regained popularity
mostly from solo projects such as Jocelyne Beroard's "Siwo" and "Kaye Manman".
Nowadays, the zouk flag is being carried by two main groups: West Indies Attitude and
Kwak. These bands have added a new element to the fusion which is the incorporation of
Haitian compas. With Kassav' taking a "backseat", some new and young names have
taken over the zouk scene, some of them with considerable success in France. Among
others, the female trio Zouk Machine founded by Jocelyne Beroard of Kassav' had some
massive hits at the end of the 1980's. In 1990, One of the trio called Joelle Ursull made
one of France's biggest selling pop records "Black French". Kassav' also popularized
another fine female singer, Edith Lefel. Her most beautiful song "Yche Man Man", number
one in 1986, forged the way to a greater, sexier variant of zouk called "zouk love".
A decade later, zouk has imposed itself in the world music scene. It is still going
extremely strong in Paris, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and the Francophone world. The
familiarity of zouk's underlying rhythm is so strong that within a decade of its birth zouk
had become a catalyst for exciting musical experimentation amog many Paris-based
musicians from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. Zouk started to spread its
influence to other african music styles such as soukous from zaire/congo, makassi from
cameroon, music of the sahelian artists like Ismael Lo, Salif Keita and Super Diamano,
and artists from Abidjan recording studios such as Gadji Celi and Monique Seka. Zouk
musicians in Paris increasingly played and recorded with African musicians.
Taste in zouk styles differs slightly between the two antilles islands (Martinique has
a strong preference for the romantic "zouk love" style, while Gauadeloupe also enjoys the
harder, percussive "zouk beton' or "chire" style. Zouk started getting official attention in
1989 whena grammy type awards ceremony was sponsored by a French organization to
honor the best releases from martinique.
Today zouk is mainly a profitable studio scene with only a handful of actual playing
bands like Kassav', the Meteorz', Zouk Allstars, Experience 7 and others. The vast
majority of zouk recordings are pieced together by an ensemble of musicians who come
together specifically to make a record. Rarely does the band named on the album refer to
an actual working band.
On a final note, it is truly amazing that this music, extremely popular everywhere
else, has barely been heard in the United States. One answer could be the extreme focus
on studio recordings rather than live bands touring the States. Or could it be the language
barrier which most French speaking musicians encounter while trying to enter the US
market?
|
