Zagazougou Show (1997)
6 tracks, 32 minutes
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I actually wanted to talk about the original release Zagazougou Coup from 1993 on Piranha Musik, but seeing as it’s not available on any digital platforms, and this later album still seems to include a bunch of the recordings from the earlier, I’ve gone with this one instead, you’ll get the same sort of idea (although still buy that original from the Piranha website – it’s longer too!).
Côte d’Ivoire, and its largest city Abidjan in particular, was a Mecca for musical artists from all over West Africa, who headed there to record in the city’s studios, and often spent some time resident there as a result. With musicians coming from all of Côte d’Ivoire’s neighbouring countries and as far north as the Sahara, Abidjan became a hotbed of creativity. That’s why it’s so strange to me how few Ivorian stars there are whose reach extends beyond the country itself. For music fans in the UK, at least, the only Ivorian musicians to make any real impact are Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly, both reggae singers, and Dobet Gnahoré. Considering all of the musical energy emanating out of Abidjan in the last 50-or-so years, I would have expected that number to be far higher.
Which is why it’s exciting to come across an album from Côte d’Ivoire, especially one as unusual to the ear as this one. At the core of La Zagazougou is the accordion, meaning that their style is part of a pantheon of accordion music across the African continent from the funaná of Cabo Verde to the baladi of Egypt to the marabi of South Africa, and other styles from Zanzibar, DR Congo, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, Kenya and elsewhere, where they usually came into circulation through the work of missionaries. In the hands of La Zagazougou, a pair of accordions are used to great effect to create a really uplifting dance music, adding layers on top of the traditional djembe drumming and gobe rhythms and all based around the jubilant vocal melodies.
A thing that I love about La Zagazougou is how jolly and fun the music sounds, and how enjoyable it is to listen to, despite using tunings that are really idiosyncratic to European ears. The accordions themselves are built with a tremolo, in which each note is played by two reeds instead of one; the reeds are slightly detuned from each other to create a warbling effect. On these accordions, though, the reed pairs are tuned really far apart, meaning that the tremolos are very fast – meaning that to some ears, like mine, it just sounds as if every note is out-of-tune with itself. Quite a feat! Add in the fact both accordions seem to be tuned slightly differently from each other and it amounts to a whole bunch of very spicy-sounding frequency clashes – just check out the intro to the song ‘Saya’ for the perfect example. I find stuff like that brilliant because it just makes us realise how culturally-biased our notions of what music should sound like are, when just a slight difference of tuning can make a style sound completely alien to us. And yet, within a few minutes, the brain adapts to the new information, and we can enjoy the music for its own merits even away from the jangly harmonics.
It’s good practice too. Stretch your ears and your brain by listening to as much differently tuned music as possible – Indonesian gamelan is great for it, and so is Arabic classical music with all of its quarter-tone scales. And for when you want to dance to something and confuse your friends at the same time, Le Zagazougou are the ones for you!
(Oh, and if it's your bag, Merry Christmas! If not, enjoy the day and your new-found love for Ivorian music!)
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