2023-09-06 11:47:00
7:30 a.m., the powerful, hoarse voice of the DJ screams into the microphone, over a thunderous cut-and-shift background: “ Money doesn’t buy happiness, but Ruinart does! It’s not champagne… it’s eeeesssssttttt Ruiiiiinnnnnart!! “. The waitress jostles in an electric atmosphere to bring the customer the bucket containing the holy grail: a bottle of Ruinart Blanc de Blanc priced at nearly 500 euros per bottle. The recipient is Jr La Mélo, 17, a rising ivory-rap star whose success exploded in 2022. Since then, he has been the promoter of the “children’s movement”, also called maïmouna. As the young rapper tells us: “Basically, maïmouna is a musical style that was born in 2021, which is composed of coupé-décalé and French rap. It’s just that there was a buzz where a guy called Tchaikabo made a video, (and as) he didn’t quite understand the words of the sound, he said “maïmouna”. And it stuck, everyone called it that. He wasn’t the one who started the movement, but he was the one who spread the word. Otherwise we called it children’s movement in relation to the mood of the sound: these are sounds where there is not really seriousness. Normally you’ll see trap sounds that will make you think, drill sounds and all that, but the maïmouna here is just for fun.
Serious or not, Dadju himself converted to the movement during a duet with Didi B, a tutelary figure of the genre. As soon as the bottle arrives on the table, Jr La Mélo multiplies the photographs, immediately shared on the networks. As the cups begin to pass around, he keeps the bottle in hand, not wanting to part with his trophy for the evening.
Champagne people go to bed late
At Maison B, the new night spot for Abidjan’s elites, there are no beers on the tables, but bottles of Veuve Clicquot, Laurent Perrier, and Ruinart. The evening had already started several hours ago for the young rapper and his friends, with a first stop in a posh club in zone 4 – the expatriate district -, then at the Skinny, a club for the golden youth of Cocody where we joined him at middle of the night, at 4 a.m. At the entrance, photo equipment is kept by security guards, it is forbidden to reveal what is happening here. It’s Ali the Code, DJ Arafat’s right-hand man and friend, who introduces us to the group. After spending time with the biggest star of coupé-décalé who hit the headlines throughout the 2010s before dying in a motorcycle accident in 2019, Ali today follows the blossoming of this new ivory rap scene. It was when the Skinny closed at 6:10 a.m. that the group suggested continuing the evening at Maison B. In the car with Ali, we saw our lives pass by during a fifteen-minute journey at 120 km/h through the streets of Abidjan. . For Ali the Code, as for his late friend, existence is lived at a running pace. When the star and his entourage appear, the tension rises a notch in the club. According to Ali, who has been witnessing the succession of “concepts” for around fifteen years – the launch of music and an associated dance – in Ivory Coast, the “children’s movement” represents the strong trend of the moment: “There’s my guy who takes care of the artists here called “Djina the coordination”; he’s the one who told me about the children’s movement because he was already in the neighborhood. And when I arrived he told me there’s a new thing, the mood of young people, they go out, they party. We talked like that, and one day he brought me a little one, Jr La Melo, he presented him to me, he asked me to produce him. We tested it, we did its showcase, we saw that it was strong, we started to program it and follow it on the artistic direction. From there I follow it, I see the movement, the thing is gaining momentum, it even reminded me of the beginning of the coupé-décalé, at the beginning everyone said that it wasn’t going to last, but when the young people hooked up, the movement continued. So this is what is happening there, this new generation is in search, it is even thirsty for industry. »
If the movement affects a young audience, mainly from the precarious neighborhoods of the economic capital, its main figures come more from the wealthy neighborhood of Cocody and frequent these evenings reserved for the elites, where indecency is the order of the day, with each bottle of champagne worth at least as much as an average Ivorian salary, namely 80,000 CFA francs.
The new buccaneers
Since the dazzling appearance of the “boucantiers” (the name given to themselves by the pioneers of coupé-décalé) on the Ivorian music scene at the beginning of the 2000s, the nights of Abidjan have changed their face: the demonstration of strength and wealth is become an existential practice for an entire generation who grew up in the middle of the Ivorian crisis to the jerky sounds of coupé-décalé. “The children’s movement” is only the latest phenomenon in the rich news of dance music in Côte d’Ivoire which has established itself over the last twenty years throughout French-speaking Africa, but also as an influence for Nigerian afro-pop artists and for French rappers such as MHD and Dadju.
Born in the early 2000s among young Ivorians who frequented Parisian nightclubs, the boucantiers movement was consolidated around the “Jet-Set” group which included Douk Saga, Molare, Lino Versace, Serge Defallet and Boro Sanguy. These young people liked to show off in nightclubs dressed in Italian designer suits, Cuban cigars on their lips and a glass of champagne between their fingers. They also invented the practice of working: throwing money at artists and the public in style to impose their name on the night by making the DJs sing it. On their return to Ivory Coast in 2002, they spread this lifestyle which mixes arrogance and an appetite for drunken nights. Sometime at half mast after the death of Douk Saga in 2007, the movement took on an unprecedented scale the following decade with the rise of DJ Arafat, Debordo Leekunfa, Serge Beynaud, and more recently Fior 2 Bior or Safarel Obiang who updated the genre by mixing it with rap and afro-pop. But in recent years, coupé-décalé has gradually given way to ivory rap which borrows its jerky rhythms, clothing styles, but also its acrobatic and spectacular dance steps.
For the very young rappers of maïmouna, whose clips show images of the seaside town of Assinie, big cars, bottles of champagne and pretty women, wealth and success are at the heart of the project, even if Jr La Melo sings it, to free the (young) grandpas:
We’re going to fuck the moulaaaaaa [l’argent]
Jr on the melodyeeee
What are you going to do, what are you going to do, what have you done?
This is bad, isn’t it? yes maman was sleeping
We came to have fun, put the grandpas all aside
You take in me and my girl you come back up
But it was when maïmouna I came back up
[…]
We came to spoil everything
If you have fun I’ll fuck your sister
The little one has the bobbins [seins] tana ah tana
On s’en va en mama ye tanana
We’re talking to you about resin
I’m telling you that all the little ones are gigatan [enjaillé/excité]
We don’t need advice
You’re in too much of a hurry, I’m ahead
I’m never behind, in too much of a hurry, I’m in front
I’m never behind
(Jr La Melo, Bobi, 2022)
Dance and emergence
Two days before Jr La Mélo’s visit to Maison B, we were already there to attend the performance of star dancer Alaingo, ex-member of the Magic Feet pair with Computer, who made a career with DJ Arafat. Around 2:30 a.m. we joined his acolytes Sangokou and Mardoche, who belong to the stable of the artist Debordo Leekunfa. After more than an hour of waiting in a small neighborhood maquis for the manager of the place to call the dancers, we finally joined Alaingo shortly after 4 a.m. When an hour later the dancers take the stage, they propel the already lively evening into the sky. While the jubilant crowd around the track exclaims in front of a perfect somersault before Sangokou and the numerous stunts of these followers of the acrobatic dance called roukaskas, the rapper Tchaikabo, gold tooth and neat dreads, decides to distinguish himself by from to work the dancers. These few tickets thrown on the ground will complete their evening treat, accompanied by a bottle of well-priced sparkling wine and a whiskey and coke that we share with them, before they enter the stage, at a table wedged between the stage and bar. If the stars of coupé-décalé and ivory rap benefit from rapid and considerable inflows of money, musicians and dancers cannot say the same. The fee for this type of evening or for a live performance varies from 100,000 to 200,000 CFA francs per dancer for those who are already well established in the industry, while that of an established artist can vary from 2 to 10 million Fcfa according to its current popularity, to which will be added sponsorship contracts for beer or mobile phone brands. As Sangokou explains, who first made a career with DJ Abobolais (who died in 2017) before becoming a choreographer for Black K, Serges Beynaud and dancing in Debordo’s stable: “ The services themselves are my basis, it’s my little livelihood. I myself try to improvise the different evenings with the managers, in the different nightclubs where the evenings take place. If we can take… We’re not going to say perhaps the fee, but at least the (price of) transport to be able to go and find ourselves, we do it. Either it’s a show case or it’s a demonstration. For a showcase, if you need all of Debordo’s dancers, the remuneration is high, if it’s just me I can negotiate. But not all promoters and managers have enough, some will give you 100,000, others will go even lower ».
If this income still allows experienced dancers to evolve in these musical environments and to frequent Abidjan nights, the same does not apply to all the workers without whom these places would not function, whose salaries rarely exceed the 150,000 CFA per month for waiters, security or maintenance agents who observe the parade of big cars and local stars every evening. Worse still: the situation of the many young people who sell cigarettes or who transport drinks between cellars and establishments, without fixed salaries. They spend their night waiting for customers before sleeping a few hours and returning to informal activity during the day.
The spectacular development of these nightlife venues since the beginning of the 2010s owes much to the “emergence” promoted by the Head of State in a country where the GDP growth rate varies from +7% to +11% since the end of the post-electoral crisis of 2010-2011. Ivorian nights are a reflection of this New World where the enrichment of some owes above all to the stagnation of others while the cost of living – as elsewhere – has increased drastically in recent years. At 9:30 a.m., when Maison B finally closes its doors, the customers emerge haggard from the air-conditioned box. The day has already dawned for several hours as these young, tired party-goers return to their luxury cars. Taxis stop in the hope of a well-paid fare, and street vendors watch enviously and astonished the parade of young rap stars.
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