Tuerie Du Senateur Eric Fin Decembre 2009 1
Looking at the recent history of Ivorian popular music you can start to trace out the political struggle of a nation trying to sort out a collective identity. The core question is defining Ivority. In the 70's Congolese musicians settled in booming cities like Abidjan and Nairobi dominating scenes and studios on both the East and West coast, eventually putting their stamp on African music across the continent. Alpha Blondy's worldwide success led to Ivory Coast becoming a Reggae country. In the 90's things started to change, and Ivorians started to turn the tide with their homegrown dance musics now a dominating influence across Africa.
The above mix is so amazing to me. Senateur Eric a young Ivorian DJ (I think based in France) has one of the baddassest Skyrock blogs out there and through this he really shows how innovative and just damn good Ivorian DJ's are. Of course you can draw paralles to Detroit, etc, they add new ways of mixing that are distinct to their cultural and (perhaps) a nationalistic understanding of music. They put their own spin on old forms to make a new sound and style all their own, just as all those innovators of electronic music did in the 80's, or that group of young San Francisco DJ's did in the 90's (Excelsior what up!)
This mix will give you good insight into how Coupe Decale works both in the studio and live at the club. If you can't tell, there is generally a standard constant sample running of a clave snare pattern with a 4/4 kick drum, and the improvisation happens over that. I love how he chops up the big tunes from the year and throws in starts and stops of intros and vocal bits. Plus the mixing is so clean and on point! For a visual example of this improv style check the video below where a guitarist plays over a Coupe Decale beat. In my opinion this is African Digital Music culture at its best, I can't wait to see where we go from here!
Man, that was kookoo-bananas! Keep it up, Chief.
Posted by: MrFab | March 31, 2010 at 06:36 PM