2023-09-06 11:49:00
Like every Sunday, from 5 p.m., the Académie du Zouglou, a maquis-live located in the popular commune of Yopougon, gradually welcomes groups of friends who come to relax over a few beers or bottles of Valpierre, an inexpensive wine very widespread in Ivory Coast. They are waiting for the performance of the evening artists in front of whom they will be able to perform a few dance steps. At the beginning of June, while the rainy season is in full swing and making it difficult to organize concerts, a table is occupied by a group of women in their fifties gathered to celebrate Mother’s Day, a week later the official date, heavy rain having disrupted the festivities. Another group sits nearby and orders a first case of 12 Doppel, a dark beer from the Castel group flanked by a charging bull on the label, it will only be the first in a long series. Quickly, the maquis fills up and the DJ increases the sound level at the same rate as the customers’ drunkenness increases.
The manager of the place, Mireille, arrives to give instructions to the teams. She has run this maquis since its opening in 2018 and manages a team of eleven people: housekeepers, waitresses, sound and lighting technicians… She is responsible for finding artists to fill the program: confirmed stars on Friday evenings and orchestras repeats on Sunday. The biggest names in zouglou have passed through here: Soum Bill, Yodé & Siro and even Molière. This evening, it will be the SelecBand orchestra which will liven up the evening, alternating between the hits of the rock-bet group Les Woody and those of the stars of zouglou. The atmosphere in the maquis is good-natured, the tables are filled with beers at 2000 CFA francs for a set of three or racks, braised chicken, attiéké and choukouya (braised meat in pieces, Editor’s note). Everyone eats until they are “gbê” (satiated) and drinks until they are no longer thirsty. To liven up the evening, the host proclaims the classic slogans: “ in Zouglou it always succeeds » or even shouts “ Zouglou! ”, to which the audience responds “ C.I ! ” (Ivory Coast). Up to the head of state, zouglou is referred to today as “ cultural identity ” from the country.
Ivory Coast goes underground
Popular institutions, the “maquis” are probably the most frequented places of entertainment. Appearing at the turn of the 1990s, particularly in the legendary Rue Princesse (see our article), these vast, open and inexpensive spaces are visited at all hours of the day and night, and fill up considerably on weekends. Since 2007, they have taken on a new dimension with the arrival of the concept of “maquis-live” which we owe to the artist Vieux Gazeur and the businessman Franck Govoei – known as Francky Lagova – who, after having attended the concert of a reggae cover orchestra decided to tour zouglou artists live in popular spaces: “ This operation is a free concept. My goal is not only to break the barrier of large theaters, but also to popularize, that is to say, to give a show to the housewife. The target of the zouglou is Koumassi Sicogi’s mother [quartier populaire] he’s the shopkeeper, that is to say the guy who listens to zouglou-la, he’s the swarmer [le débrouillard], and it is to him that we must send the zouglou. He’s the guy who leaves the house with his 5,000 francs, in his program, in his heart, he’s going to drink 10 beers. If it’s 550 f a beer he doesn’t drink! The guy from Cocody [quartier chic] he’s already seated, he has 30,000 in his pocket, if he arrives and we say here it’s 700, that doesn’t bother him. The guy from Yopougon works all week and there is one day in the week when he kills himself with his friends. That is to say, there are four guys, and then each one comes with their 10,000, and then it’s one after the other, it’s precise eh! They know they’re starting with a choukouya, and then they know they’re drinking! They drink, they drink! »
By making zouglou accessible, Francky Lagova is the precursor of this live scene which, since 2007, has seen a proliferation of spaces which now spread across the entire national territory. It is also he who will play live the first Zouglou cover orchestra, which subsequently became one of the flagship groups of the genre until the death of their singer Jean-Roger Adom in 2022: the Zouglou Makers. The artists all recognize that maquis-live have revolutionized the country’s musical economy, allowing them to have weekly fees and to be less dependent on patrons.
Yopougon, the birthplace of zouglou, is also the best off in the maquis with the most famous space of its kind: the Internat, set up by Aimé Zébié and the artist Fitini in 2009. Every Sunday evening, the place welcomes up to 1,800 people in front of the stars of the moment. 70 people work directly in the place, and, according to its owner, nearly 200 people benefit indirectly from the profits: women who sell food nearby, cigarette sellers, shopkeepers, young people who secure customers’ cars, etc. Over the past ten years, more modest maquis-lives, such as the Academy, have appeared in Yopougon: Le Campus du Zouglou, Chez Gnawa and even la Forêt Magique. Most of these names directly allude to the student origins of Zouglou music, born in the university city of Yopougon in the midst of the struggle for multi-partyism in the early 1990s.
From the Academy to the pharmacy, every job deserves its beer
In the stands set up around the maquis, all the classics of Ivorian street food can be found: braised chicken, kedjenou (meat in spicy soup), fish soup, choukouya and, of course, garba (fried tuna & cassava semolina). ). At the Academy, we meet Mamouska, a lady in her sixties sitting at her stand peeling onions, she works as a family with her two daughters. She lives in a courtyard on the adjacent street and saw the creation of the maquis as a good opportunity to open her business. She is the oldest restaurateur on this end of the street, where she rents her location to the owner of the maquis. She works all week, noon and evening, but it’s especially on the weekends with the lives that she manages to bring in the money. At his side, Eddy, a young man who makes chicken and grilled pork comes every evening from another district of Yopougon, Toit Rouge. He has worked here with his partner for two years, only in the evenings. Like her colleague, it’s the weekends when money comes in more easily.
If the maquis are popular consumption spaces, because they are inexpensive and popular, they are also central living spaces in neighborhoods which allow many people to work. For a very large part of the population, especially men, these open spaces constitute the main place of sociability and entertainment. This maquis culture is evolving today towards a new type of place, which takes over once the night goes on: low-budget nightclubs, whose ambition is both to reproduce this popular atmosphere while ” upscaling » equipment in closed spaces with strobe, laser and smoke machine.
In the district of 220 housing units in Adjamé, a former city of civil servants which has today become a neighborhood of the working class, we meet Dieudonné and Paul Éric who take us to the “Farmacy 2 Garde”, whose name is borrowed from one of the historic maquis of the legendary Princess Street. The place is already full when we enter, but will quickly reach saturation as the evening artists, the “Les Élites” orchestra, begin their soundcheck. Traffic is difficult in the room where the waitresses send beer kit after beer kit to each table. At ours, our attendants wouldn’t let us order and refilled our beers before we had even drunk half of the ones in front of us. The place claims to be “the best nightclub in Adjamé”, and given the high population for a Wednesday, this does not seem impossible. The atmosphere is enhanced by the lighting effects and smoke on the track.
Here, the clientele is mainly made up of young people from the neighborhood who live in informal economies or in odd jobs. Beer is the same price as at the Academy, and the tables are covered with large ice buckets filled with drinks. Young people dress up to go out: Disquaded 2 and Armani t-shirts, (fake) Lacoste designer tracksuits, open shoes and a few sneakers, like these magnificent Jamaica-colored Nikes that Dieudonné wears. Some adopt the coupe-décalé style, elongated single-lens glasses and American clothing, OM or DC brand caps on their heads. Outside the bar, however, not everyone has the chance to watch the show. Because if the place is intended to be accessible to all, a few young people without income who sell cigarettes in front of the bar or precarious people sitting at the coffee kiosk opposite can only afford to attend the evening from afar. The night doesn’t belong to everyone.
For Paul-Éric and Dieudonné, who are responsible for the union of a 220-unit tower, this place has been good for the town: it has eased tensions between two formerly rival neighborhoods by allowing young people to get together and do party together. He also secured this street corner, which is now lively every night. Finally, the owner of the space, Antoine, gave work to young people from the 220 housing units, a neighborhood from which he himself comes. We could add that the place brings real added value to the neighborhood, hosting every Sunday evening a set by DJ Arsenal, star of the early days of coupé-décalé with his “concept” which combines dance & music, the shéloubouka, which allowed him to win an RTI Music Awards in 2005, a prize awarded by national television.
The “Farmacy 2 Garde” and the open maquis of Yopougon are emblematic of this maquis culture, omnipresent in Abidjan as in the towns of the interior of Côte d’Ivoire. For many Ivorians, these places are at the heart of their social life, people come there to have fun, discover music news and dance, all at a price that remains accessible to most, unlike certain nightclubs. As Oulahi, a client of the Académie du Zouglou, puts it, most people like him who frequent these spaces do not even think of going to the new upscale places of the economic capital: “ These are the super chic neighborhoods where you need a lot of resources, with what we have, we prefer to stay in the maquis ».
photo C. Millerand.
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