It was one of our neighbours who got me to listen to Jonathan for the first time. It was a relationship born out of scorn. He had bought a DVD player and new speakers, and he would leave Jonathan on repeat and go to work. My bedroom had thin walls and shared a common wall with his living room and I would come back from school and have to listen to “Jonathan” on end.
But eventually, the charm of the song got to me. In those repeated plays, annoyance turned to something else and as I did my assignments, the sound of “Jonathan eeeee” wobbled in my head as my pen slid on my books.
That, more or less sums up my relationship with coupé-decalé music. What I first saw as an utter display of madness and depravity eventually charmed me. And Arafat’s ‘DJ Jonathan’ was the very first song in a long line of many.
And there were many; Mulukuku DJ, DJ Jacob, Les Perroquets d’Adbidjan, Shegal Mokonzi, Molare, DJ Kaloundji, Lino Versace, DJ Kitoko, DJ Zidane, PS One, Lassisi Saliou, Boro Sanguy, Jean-Jacques Kouame, Wes Kelly, and of course the almighty Douk Saga.
It was an interesting period for music; piracy was killing the music industry’s revenues and Makossa was living its worst period in terms of creativity. This was 2004 and Petit Pays, the torchbearer of Makossa was giving us the bottom of the barrel from his répertoire of music.
It was not a surprise therefore when Coupé-Decalé took over our hearts. It was a different rhythm and a different style from a country which hitherto had given us Meiway, Magic System, Zouglou and Mapouka music. As a matter of fact it was not that far-fetched a style from Mapouka sonically, as the heavy pounding and fast rhythm in Mapouka was an element of some coupé-decalé songs.
But it was the style and the flair of coupé that made everything different. The clothes, the shoes, the sunshades, the jewellery, the attitude, the dance steps, the new vocabulary that came with the music (boucantier is now in the French dictionary) and the brazen defiance of all social norms about wealth that seemed to make the music more attractive.
Coupé-decalé was more than a music. It was a movement. It was post-war Cote D’Ivoire and the music came at time when everyone in Cote-D’Ivoire, the youth in particular, was finding their way and issues around national unity were being questioned. Coupé was a sound of young people, by young people and for young people. It was a common denominating factor for a youth that had been fractured and disenfranchised by years of internal political and social conflict.
Historians no doubt will not be able to write about the modern history of Cote D’Ivoire without mentioning how Coupé -Decalé and football (Drogba had just moved to Chelsea) played bigger roles than any political strategy to foster peace and togetherness in the period after the early-2000s conflicts in Cote-D’Ivoire
It was only a few years ago that it all hit me; what the likes of Arafat were able to accomplish in those early years of coupé-decalé music.
What started as young men organising events in the Parisian night-clubs, specifically on Sunday nights when everyone else was preparing for work on Monday, grew into a continental phenomenon copied and followed by many.
Baggy jeans gave way to slim, high collared shirts and ‘patte-d’elephants jeans’. The boucantier lifestyle and everything that accompanied it, notably the music, was the new emblem of the Francophone African youth and in its own single way, set the pace about changing the narrative around Africa and Cote D’Ivoire in particular; not to be seen anymore as a continent of poverty and flies hovering around dirty children with swollen stomachs, but as one where people were able to drink champagne and live a jet set lifestyle, whether real or fake.
I remember two scenes from that time; the first one from the Douk Saga ‘Couper Decaler’ music video were Douk Saga was in the streets, sharing money to white people passing by. The second one was in a music video where they put a side-by-side comparison of Abidjan and Paris. If that wasn’t changing the narrative, then I don’t know what it is.
Arafat will go down as the last of an extinct breed. After Douk Saga died, everything changed for everyone that started the coupe decale movement. Everything changed for everyone except for Arafat. Arafat, like a snake, was able to shed his skin over and over, to change his sound and to reinvent himself, enabling him to stay relevant in the musical scene. No one else from the early 2000s coupe era has been able to do that.
Not only did he reinvent himself, he was able to remain at the forefront and create new trends under the umbrella of the coupé-decalé music. New trends that were copied by many, both in the sound and in the style; the most successful of these being ‘Kpongor.’
While many have been dissatisfied with his music over the last few years (me included), it is hard to deny that many have remained under the charm, a difficult feat to pull off amidst the competition created by new digital music channels.
Arafat’s death closes the chapter of the era of the creators of coupé-decalé. I like to think of it as the Golden Era of coupé music. Lino Versace and Molare have tried to make unsuccessful comebacks. I doubt they ever will.
But overall, what I think we can take from all this is how much young people are important to the growth and the changing of perspectives in Africa. These guys contributed to peace in Cote D’Ivoire more than politicians did. It is a slap in the face to the current wave of old man politics in Africa; a gerontocracy of patriarchs and living ancestors. Arafat’s death is a reminder that we, young people own Africa, that we are the masters of our fate and only we can change our destiny, and one way or the other we need to begin to take charge of it.
May he rest in power and may his family and close friends find consolation in this time of grief.
#ValarMorghulis #WhatIsDeadMayNeverDie
- Wandji Wilfred.