Coupé-Décalé

The name comes from Nouchi, the street slang of Abidjan. Coupé means “to cheat” and décalé means “to run away”: get rich quick, then disappear. It described a rebellious attitude of beating the system, and early songs celebrated Ivorians who had made money abroad.

Coupé-décalé is Ivorian music, but it was born in Paris. It grew in African nightclubs there in the early 2000s, then took over Abidjan just as Côte d’Ivoire entered civil war. Its sound mixes fast programmed beats with Ivorian rhythms and samples of Congolese ndombolo, and it spread across Francophone Africa and its diaspora in France.

Coupé-décalé follows earlier Ivorian dance music such as zouglou, the student-led sound of the 1990s, and draws on the traditional dance of the Akoupé, a sub-group of the Attié people. Its real starting point, though, was a group of young Ivorians in Paris who turned nights out into a show of style and spending.

DJ Jacob is credited with starting the craze around 2000 at the Nelson, an African nightclub in Paris. It then caught on at the Atlantis and the Alizée. A crew of Ivorian regulars calling themselves the Jet Set became its stars: Douk Saga, Molare, Lino Versace, Serge Defalet, Boro Sangui and others. They were not musicians, but they wore designer clothes, danced and threw banknotes into the air. This ritual became known as travaillement, showering money on a dancer or singer to honour them.

In 2003 Douk Saga, born Stéphane Doukouré, released “Sagacité”, the first coupé-décalé record and the genre’s anthem. When he and the Jet Set flew home to Abidjan, the movement exploded. Côte d’Ivoire had entered civil war in 2002, and under curfews and national division young people gathered in maquis (local bars) and nightclubs to dance. The same year, a young DJ from Rue Princesse in Yopougon, DJ Arafat, broke through with “Jonathan”. Douk Saga died in October 2006, aged 32, and the Jet Set performed at his funeral in honour of the man they called “President”.

After Douk Saga, DJ Arafat became the genre’s biggest star and was called the “king” of coupé-décalé. He mixed in traditional African music, Nigerian Afrobeat, rap and Brazilian funk, and invented new dances for his songs. Hits such as “Kpangor”, “Zoropoto”, “Enfant béni” and “Dosabado” made him one of the most popular musicians in the Francophone world. He won best artist of the year at the Coupé-Décalé Awards in 2016 and 2017, and his last album, Renaissance (2018), featured Maître Gims and Dadju. Rivalries were part of the scene, and artists such as Serge Beynaud, Debordo Leekunfa, Bebi Philip and DJ Mix also rose in this period.

DJ Arafat died on 12 August 2019, aged 33, after a motorbike crash in Abidjan. Tens of thousands of fans filled the 35,000-capacity Félix Houphouët-Boigny stadium for an overnight funeral concert, where Davido, Fally Ipupa, Sidiki Diabaté and Serge Beynaud performed. The culture minister awarded him the national order of cultural merit.

Coupé-décalé is music for the dance floor. Songs run on fast, looping drum programming, layered with Ivorian percussion and Congolese-style guitar. Singers shout catchphrases and name-check friends, rivals and big spenders, much as a griot praises a patron. Almost every hit comes with its own dance, and the moves borrow from ndombolo and from football dribbling. Douk Saga’s “Afuka Fuka” hand gesture was one of the first.

Lyrics mix French and Nouchi, the Abidjan street slang that gave the genre its name. They are short, rhythmic and full of onomatopoeia and metaphors, closer to chants than to storytelling. Most songs celebrate the night, the dance and the people throwing money, and many introduce the steps for a new dance. Critics have called the lyrics empty, but fans hear them as pure escapism, written for joy in hard times.

More than twenty years after “Sagacité”, coupé-décalé is still the sound of celebration in Côte d’Ivoire and across Francophone Africa. Its influence is clear in French rap and Afro-pop, where artists such as MHD pay tribute to its pioneers, and in the Ivorian dance hits that go viral online. The genre began among Ivorians in Paris, and today it continues to move between Abidjan and the diaspora.