Frank Bessem's Musiques d'Afrique: Tiken Jah Fakoly (Côte d'Ivoire)

Musiques d'Afrique Musiques de Côte d'Ivoire

Tiken Jah Fakoly is more than just another African reggae singer. Born a griot, he has a message to put forward, and he sings about African regimes being autocratic and cleptocratic, the people being oppressed and deprived from freedom of expression. He recorded two cassettes in the first half of the 1990s, but it was Mangercratie that made him known throughout Africa. Released in Abidjan in 1997, it took another two years before the album was released in France. In 2000, Fakoly won the prestigious RFI Découverte Afrique award. Although reggae is popular in the whole of Africa mainly through Bob Marley, and is played throughout the continent, Côte d'Ivoire brought forward some of the most famous stars of the genre, for example Alpha Blondy, Ismael Isaac, Les Frères Keita and now Tiken Jah Fakoly. Born: 23 June 1968, as Moussa Doumbia, in Odienné Style: Reggae.

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