Meiway - 100% Zoblazo
It's sailor Meiway with white gloves replacing the hankies. Meiway makes up 100% of the artists who play a genre called Zoblazo, and many of his albums are subtitled with an ever-increasing percentage. His 2010 album M20 was 1000% Zoblazo.
Zoblazo, though incorporating rhythms from around the country, started as a regional music. Meiway is from the Nzima (aka Apollo) people of the Grand Bassam region in the south of the Cote d'Ivoire. And it is not only his traditional rhythms he uses, he sometimes sings his traditional language. And in this way he is a survivor of a music scene dominant in the years before zouglou became the national sound of Ivorian popular music.
Ernesto Djédjé - Ziboté
The history of Ivorian popular music in brief: Cote d'Ivoire became independent from France in 1960. This means western rock n roll and soul had plenty of time to find local artists within the Ivorian music scene before the French left. Like the rest of the world, initially there was not a lot of deviation from what was being heard in the UK and the US. But after independence Ivorians started to think about their identity.
For popular musicians, the first step was to shed at least some French and start singing these western styles in their traditional languages. By the 1970s artists started looking at their regional rhythms, those still played in the villages. Soon these too were being modernised and incorporated into Ivorian pop music.
Ernesto Djédjé is perhaps the biggest name from this era. He was not the first to sing in his native Bété language, and he was not even the first to use Bété rhythms, but his goal was to update his musical tradition. He did so by creating a genre he called Ziblibithy. Elsewhere former rock n roller N'goran Hyacinthe did the same with the Baoule rhythms, and the trend continued with other artists right through to the likes of Meiway in the Eighties. These pop styles, based on regional rhythms and languages, became popular but something felt wrong. These artists, singing in their regional tongues, and as popular as they were, couldn't represent country, which had 70 languages and a multitude of regional rhythms and dances.
People worried about these things, something which was allowed to happen thanks to the lack of an oppressive Ministry of Culture defining what was and was not the national music. In this Cote d'Ivoire was very lucky, and such freedom would eventually allow the development of zouglou.
Aboutou Roots - Prend Pour Toi
Head further along the coast from Meiway's home and you reach villages on the shores of some lagoons. It was from here Aboutou Roots came, bringing with them their regional Youssoumba rhythms. Like Meiway they started in the pre-zouglou days of the mid-to-late Eighties. Like Meiway they are also still performing.
Zouglou and Coupé-Décalé may have dominated the Ivorian music scene over the last 25 years, and the popularity of reggae and hip hop has waxed and waned, but the sounds of the regions, a direct link to centuries of ever-evolving traditional musics, still has a strong place in the consciousness of the Ivorian music scene. Without these styles there would be no Zouglou or Coupé-Décalé, no Bebi Philip or Magic System. It's comforting to know modernity has allowed this constant evolution to continue.
