Traditional music
What better emblem of Guadeloupe's musical tradition than its carnival? One of the most famous in the world, it lasts a month of frenzy, with parades of splendid costumes, music, brass bands, drums and popular jubilation all over Guadeloupe. As the island's most important event, the participants, grouped in different associations, prepare months in advance, in particular for the creation of the costumes. In addition to the costumes, it's the music that plays a key role in the carnival. Modern instrumentation draws on a wide spectrum of percussion instruments: plastic drums, bells, chacha (variations of maracas), tibwa (two wooden sticks struck on the back of a drum or a piece of bamboo) and the famous gwoka. Many groups also use konn lanbi (lambi conches) as a wind instrument. Naturally, over time, some groups have become more famous than others. Such is the case of Akiyo, an ensemble of hundreds of members, musicians, percussionists and singers, undisputed stars of the Pointe-à-Pitre Carnival. From the 1980s onwards, the group's success took them on stage, sometimes accompanied by some 80 musicians, and opened the door to studios. Their first album, Mémoires , was released in 1992, heralding an extensive discography. More than just a band, Akiyo has become a veritable cultural movement with a social and political impact.
Another of Guadeloupe's essential musical icons is the gwoka. A traditional form of expression typical of Guadeloupe that once enabled slaves to communicate with each other, gwoka is a true pillar of Guadeloupean culture, listed as an intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO since 2014. Mainly played with drums called "ka", often accompanied by other percussion instruments such as the chacha and tibwa, it's the size of the drums that distributes the roles, with the largest, the boula, playing the central rhythm and the smallest, the melody. The latter interacts with the dancers, singers and choirs, whose voices are often guttural, nasal and rough. Among the great names of the genre, Ti Céleste and his shoulder drum, Marcel Lollia dit "Vélo" and Guy Konquet are considered the masters.
Far from being a tool of struggle in the past - which led colonial society to ban it, seeing it as an act of subversion - gwoka today is a popular and festive expression. On Saturdays, gwoka players and other rastas can often be seen gathering in the center of Pointe-à-Pitre, or performing at the famous léwoz. And given the importance of the discipline, a Gwoka Festival has naturally been created. Usually held in mid-July in Sainte-Anne, it features the island's finest drummers and other percussionists. In addition to the Carnival, which offers the best possible panorama, a number of folkloric events such as Îlet en Fête (town of Gosier) or the Fête de la Saint-Barthélemy also provide a taste of the island's musical traditions.
Popular Music
Of course, one genre is indissociable from the French West Indies and Guadeloupe in particular: zouk. Introduced in the 1980s, it is descended from kadans (a Haitian meringue popular in the French West Indies in the 1970s) and cadence-lypso (kadans from Dominica), and incorporates many local elements such as gwoka, drum, ti bwa and biguine. The history of the genre is intrinsically linked to its star band, a relative of zouk and a West Indian icon: Kassav'. It all began in 1979, when Pierre-Edouard Décimus, a member of Guadeloupe's flagship kadan orchestra Les Vikings, and Freddy Marshall, another West Indian musician, decided to revitalize the music they had always played. Jacob Desvarieux joined them and the group took shape. With their first album, Love and Ka dance, this young group called Kassav' gave birth to a new musical genre: zouk. With the second album, Lagué mwen, Jocelyne Beroard, a native of Martinique, joined the band. The group expanded, and Kassav' went on to enjoy worldwide success: Paris, Cape Verde, New York, Japan... Under the group's impetus, zouk was exported and quickly became a worldwide hit. In 2019, the group celebrated its 40th anniversary, and continued to perform on the world's biggest stages to enthusiastic audiences. On July 30, 2021, the group's co-founder, Jacob Desvarieux, died at the age of 65 of the Covid-19 virus.
Biguine may not be as popular as it once was, but it's still widely performed and danced. Dating back to the late 19th century, shortly after the abolition of slavery, biguine evolved from gwoka and incorporated bélè - a Martinican drum - as well as influences from French music. Originally, biguine was played by an orchestra comprising flute, violin, clarinet, guitar, banjo, saxophone, trumpet and drums. The genre has many similarities with New Orleans jazz. Many West Indian musicians present in Paris during the 1920s incorporated aspects of jazz into their style. Guadeloupean jazzman Albert Livrat was one of the greatest biguine musicians in history, and is still famous for having dared to mix (successfully!) with bebop, inventing a new style: "wabap".
If you're a fan of the genre, don't miss the Festival International du Zouk at the end of June, when the biggest names in zouk gather in the same place at the same time, with dance competitions, exhibitions, concerts and a craft village... Otherwise, there are plenty of places on the island to catch a good concert, such as Le Schiva in Le Moule, one of Guadeloupe's best-known nightclubs, or Le Cercle in Le Lamentin, a club with zouk nights at weekends.
Current music
In love with all kinds of music, Guadeloupe knows how to keep its ears open, and influences from neighboring islands are always welcome. That's how ragga (or dancehall) came to the fore. This purely Jamaican product quickly found its feet in Guadeloupe, and artists such as Krys and Admiral-T have quickly become leaders in the genre.
There's also kako, a genre born in early 2000 that combines traditional music with more modern sounds, and rap which, like everywhere else, has also taken root in Guadeloupe, led by committed artists such as Edson X and T Kimp Gee, who tackle social issues and the daily lives of abandoned youth. A good place to hear ragga or rap in Guadeloupe is the Touloulou, a discotheque located on the beach of Petite-Anse in Marie-Galante, which often organizes concerts.
Among the younger generation, bouyon from Dominica and Shatta, a sub-genre of Jamaican dancehall, are becoming increasingly popular and are being exported beyond the Caribbean. Artists from Martinique in particular (Kalash, Maureen, Meryl...) are making a name for themselves in this highly rhythmic genre with its explicit lyrics. The All Day In Music festival in Le Moule is one of the biggest shows of its kind in the Caribbean.
The dance
On the whole, the older generation remains attached to the musical tradition in folk costume. The tunes of the gwoka, the laghia (combat dance) or the kalenda (lascivious dance) are as popular as ever, and those of the biguine, the waltz or the mazurka (fluid dance on twelve beats) can still be heard at country balls and community festivals. As for the younger generation, less sensitive to the yin-yin tuffé of yesterday (traditional music and dance), they have mastered the collé-serré of today's zouk or the twirling, nervous dehanché of ragga.
