The story of Kassav’
Zouk has such a contested and complex background as a musical style and cultural movement that it feels easiest to tell its story through the lens of its pioneering catalyst: the band, Kassav’. The group was formed in Paris in 1979 by multi-instrumentalists and producers Jacob Desvarieux, Pierre-Edouard Décimus, and Freddy Marshall out of a collective desire to produce a Créole musical force on their own terms.
Décimus drew on his experience as bassist for Les Vikings de Guadeloupe and Desvarieux as a highly-seasoned Paris-based session musician. They added experimentation with new technology like drum machines and synthesizers, borrowing rhythms from the distinctively Guadeloupean gwoka drum patterns. The resulting steady beat held influences from Haitian compas to American-influenced funk with tambour drum percussion adding weight.
As the group evolved, a rotating cast of musicians joined them much like what you’d see from George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic. Algerian, Armenian, Belgian and Hungarian players layered on horn arrangements, Pierre-Edouard’s brother Georges Décimus lent his lethal basslines, virtuoso pianist Jean-Claude Naimro completed a sound that elevated the zouk style far beyond any other genre of Caribbean origin.
Kassav’ codified zouk music in 1984 with the hit “Zouk le sel Medikamen a nous! (Zouk is the only medicine we have!).” An article from the Redbull Music Academy reflects, “drawing influences from the Guadeloupean Mendé rhythm, the track pulled an insistent guitar riff and call-and-response vocals over an almost ludicrously bouncing beat – a beat that would go on to define zouk in much the same way Steely & Clevie’s dembow riddim would form the bed-rock for legions of reggaeton producers in the Dominican Republic.”
Filling the enormous Zenith concert hall in Paris for six successive nights in 1987, touring across France and filling stadiums in West Africa, Kassav’ created a movement without any help from mainstream Parisian media. In that Redbull article, Hugo Mendez said, “ it’s a celebration of a sector of the Francophone (and more importantly Créolophone) diaspora, one that is born out of both a physical movement of people and expanding technical studio possibilities, all against a backdrop of social change as France struggled to come to terms with its colonial legacy.”
He continued, “It is a style that has extended its influence worldwide: into the rest of the Caribbean, South America, West Africa, the Indian Ocean and innumerable clubs the world over.”
