The reggae rhythm of Ivory Coast
I was staying in Abidjan a couple days before going on to Senegal. The city had an impressive skyline and made an interesting stopover in West Africa. There was a feeling of dislocation from the places I had passed through. There was always the promise of reinvention and I was starting to make a hybrid identity of who I was.
I checked into a hotel and settled into a whitewashed room that looked out onto a small courtyard. Soon I was back outside and walking the road of my hotel. It was a hot day. I didn’t know where I was going so I took a walk around a market.
Women sat in the shade of a large mango tree selling their fruits and vegetables and gossiping in Dioula, the market language. I could get by in French, their official language, as English wasn’t spoken much. A man carrying a bag of cocoa on his head strolled past mounds of papayas, red chilies, green bananas, onions and yams displayed on plastic rice bags on the ground or on raised wooden platforms. A young woman wearing a brightly colored dress of African wax prints wandered among the sellers, swaying her hips to a coupé-décalé tune playing in her head.
Later I took a minibus to Cocody. I got out at my stop, rattled from the chaotic ride, walked down the street and came across a craft market. Vendors were selling bracelets and necklaces, baskets and wood carvings.
I checked out some Korhogo cloth. Made from fermented mud-based pigment, these hand-painted designs, stencilled in dark brown or black, depict goats, fish and crocodiles, revered animals in the animist mythology of the Senufo people. It is worn or hung in shrines and homes as protection against malevolant spirits. I bought one as a a wall decoration for my living room. Korhogo cloth is a popular tourist souvenir as it folds up small and travels well.
Most of the merchadise being sold in the other stalls was replica art. There were Akan brass weights, human figurines and carved masks.
In one of the stalls, I saw a Baoulé portrait mask I wanted to buy. It was pretty authentic-looking with a dark patina, a thin nose, a pursed mouth and cheeks embellished with a triangle of copper.
Around noon I took a taxi to the Plateau, the dynamic commercial district of Abijan. I had the feeling I was somewhere different when I came across the African modernism of La Pyramide, a building that looked like a strange futuristic Mayan pyramid. From where I stood I looked out at the towering high-rises, the glass and steel skyscrapers gleaming over the lagoon of a modern city in Africa.
Thirsting for a drink, I stopped at a small convenience store selling cooking oil, soap and chewing gum and bought a Kabisa energy drink. Further down the road, a plump middle-aged woman was roasting cobs of corn over a grill. The enticing smell wafting in the air made me hungry and I stopped to sample her street food. She gave me a toothless smile as she handed me a steaming corn cob.
Next I went to have a look at St Paul’s Cathedral. The futuristic-looking cathedral was designed by Italian architect Aldo Spirito. The tower, shaped as a cross, is attached to the triangular cathedral with seven cables and looks like it’s moving, like it’s being tugged. I was impressed by the size of the cross .
Late in the day, I took a rattling minibus to Treichville. The minibus filled up as we drove along the street. The bus tout, wearing a bright red shirt, hung out the open door, small bills poking out between his clenched fingers. Blasting the horn, the minibus suddenly swerved to a stop.
The tout shouted over the blasting music to people on the sidewalk, hustling them, shoving and packing them in through the sliding door. Even before all the passengers had even settled into their seats, the overloaded bus pulled out into oncoming traffic.
I got off at the next stop and walked up a road where there wasn’t much of interest, just rows of shops and a take-out place, men on the pavement hawking T-shirts and soapstone carvings, some money changers and a shoe-shine boy. Vendors had set up their wares at the back street stalls.
One stall piqued my interest. A man sitting on an oil-can stool was selling toy biplanes and cars made from bottle caps and Coke cans. His son sat on the sidewalk by the stall, lining up some planes for an attack on the cars. It had always fascinated me how less fortunate kids seemed to enjoy toys creatively made from garbage more than richer kids enjoyed their expensive store-bought toys.
I walked up the road to a music stand that sold CDs of Ivorian reggae singers like Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly. A man with matted locks sitting on a chair by the stand looked up and smiled. He played the track African Revolution by Tiken, a popular, exiled singer whose words and music incite the youth of Francophone Africa to rally against injustice.
The vendor’s name was Pascal. He was a savvy guy. Talking to him I found out some more about Alpha Blondy, a singer I’d often heard while traveling in West Africa. Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Alpha Blondy advocates for religious unity and tolerance.
He sings in Arabic and Hebrew about his love for Jerusalem. As a pilgrim he traveled to Mecca for the hajj. He climbed Masada at sunrise and wrote a song about the spiritual power of the place. He promotes religious diversity, singing in Arabic at concerts in Israel and singing in Hebrew at concerts in Muslim countries.
“He blends it all,” Pascal said. “Has these guys in costumes—like panther men of the Senufo tribe—dancing in his latest music video. He also sings about police brutality in Abidjan and does reggae covers of songs by Pink Floyd and Led Zepplin.”
The first Alpha Blondy song I ever heard was Jerusalem from the album of the same name. The album was recorded with the Wailers as his backing band at Tuff Gong studio in Jamaica. Pascal played me a song from that album called Boulevard de la Mort, which is about Boulevard Giscard d’Estaing, the expressway through south Abidjan.
The highway was named after the president of France and built during the time of the ‘Ivorian miracle’ in the 1970s when the country’s economy was booming from coffee and cocoa exports. The Ivorian president embarked on ambitious public works that included building the boulevard as a symbol of national prestige. The inauguration of the boulevard included a ceremonial parade with the president of France as the guest of honor.
Soon the highway became a race track for maniacs. It had no protected pedestrian crossing, no footbridge or underpass, so people had to run across the 100 meter-wide boulevard. Every day a pedestrian was struck and killed on what became known as ‘the boulevard of death.’ Alpha Blondy was staying at a hotel on the boulevard when he saw a child that had been killed by a car, lying on the asphalt. He wrote the song to console the parents of the child and to call out politicians who engage in grandiose building projects without much foresight.
