Tiken Jah Fakoly: Redemption songs

Tiken Jah Fakoly writes lyrics that lay bare the turmoil and suffering in Ivory Coast. Andy Morgan meets the reggae star

Ivory Coast's descent into hell follows the tragic post-colonial template of African politics. An old-school political patriarch, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, ruled with an iron fist for 33 years after independence from France. But the country prospered thanks to booming cocoa and coffee exports until the West decided to slash commodity prices in the 1980s. He died in 1993. With foreigners making up more than 25 per cent of the population, President Henri Bédié developed the odious notion of Ivoirité, a political philosophy of which the BNP would feel proud. The same philosophy was pursued by his nemesis, General Robert Guéi, and the present leader, Laurent Gbagbo. In 2002, the country split in two with the Muslim north facing the Christian or animist south. France became mired in the turmoil, and Byelorussian mercenaries were called in.

These events radicalised a generation of Ivorian musicians, but none more so than Tiken Jah Fakoly. In the mid-Eighties, he was letting his backbone slip to the beat of Bob Marley, Burning Spear and U-Roy in front of the cassette-shop sound systems of his native town of Odienné, in the north-east of Ivory Coast. When he finally managed to track down an English-speaker he discovered that his reggae heroes were singing about freedom, dignity and Africa. But how was he to emulate them when his grasp of English was limited? Then the don of African reggae, Alpha Blondy, came into his life.

"What I learned from him was simply that reggae could be sung in an African language. In his and my case the language was Dioula," explains Tiken Jah. "We're used to saying that Ivory Coast is the country of reggae whereas Senegal is the country of hip-hop. That's because the rhythm of the Dioula language is well suited to reggae. Wolof, which is spoken very fast by the Senegalese, lends itself well to rap, as does the griot tradition in Mali."

Tiken Jah began to ditch the proverbial approach to musical protest so favoured by the older generation, and to let the truth stand naked for all to see. His 1996 album Mangercratie, which urged politicians to forget all their luxurious discussions and concentrate on the simple right of all to be fed, sold more than half a million official cassettes. Nobody knows how many pirate copies have been sold. It made Tiken Jah a star, and a spokesperson for the bramagos, the impoverished hopeless youth of Abidjan, Bouaké, Bamako and Dakar. His reputation spread to France and the USA, and the French label Barclay signed him.

The success of Mangercratie and its successors Cours d'Histoire (1999), Françafrique (2002) and Coup de Gueule (2004) boosted the Tiken Jah phenomenon to the point at which only stadiums could hope to accommodate his legions of fans in West Africa. Like Bob Marley or Fela Kuti, he achieved that rare status of untouchability, where his fame is such that no politician would dare eliminate him for fear of the popular protest it might unleash.

It was not always so. Hitlists have often been unearthed with Tiken Jah's name prominent amongst those of journalists, trade unionists and opposition politicians. For a while he owed his survival to a small group of soldiers in General Guéi's bodyguard who also happened to be huge reggae fans. When the heat began to rise they would tip Tiken Jah off and he would flee north into Mali or Burkina Faso to wait for things to cool down. "I'm not scared," he declared recently. "If they have to assassinate me because I tell the truth, no problem. I'm ready. Someone has to say these things."

The musical vehicle Tiken Jah has chosen to transmit his message is the classic, fist-in-the-air, reggae sound of the Seventies, replete with lilting ganja-grooves, lush horn arrangements and feel-good vocal harmonies. "That's what I call real reggae," he says with conviction. "The artists who have survived are people like Burning Spear. He never did any ragga or jungle. He stayed with the Seventies sound. If you ask 10 youths in Mali or Ivory Coast, they don't know Buju Banton, they don't know Sizzla. But they know Burning Spear, they know U-Roy. That proves that roots reggae will last." Tiken Jah has made several pilgrimages to mix and record at Kingston's legendary Tuff Gong Studios, and reminisces about sessions with Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare, Tyrone Downie, the producer Clive Hunt, and above all, the hero of his youth, U-Roy.

Despite his dreadlocks, and his lifelong devotion to reggae as a genre, Tiken Jah is very clear about his position on Rastafarianism. He was raised in a strict Muslim family and didn't even declare his intention to become a professional musician until his father died in 1987. "He would never have accepted it, and nor would have his entourage. All his friends would have said: 'Why do you let your son sing? Don't you know he'll go to hell when he dies?'" Nonetheless, Tiken Jah remains a devout believer, and as such, accepts Rasta as a set of moral values, rather than a religion in itself. "I'm a Muslim, but the link between myself and Rasta is Haile Selassie," he explains. "He was an African leader who liberated his people from the colonial oppressor. His philosophy was to give to each person their dignity, and to aspire to equality and justice. That was the struggle of His Majesty and I adhere to that."

Fakoly's lyrics sometimes lack the spiritual subtlety of Bob Marley, but considering the brute realities of African current affairs, maybe the time for subtlety has yet to come. "They condone dictatorship/ Just to make us hungry/ They plunder our riches/ To bury us alive/ They've burnt the Congo/ Inflamed Angola/ They've ruined Gabon/ They've burnt Kinshasa," goes the chorus of "Françafrique", the opening track of Tiken Jah's new self-titled compilation album. The song targets the French politicians and businessmen who, for decades, have treated the former French colonies of Africa as their personal goldmine, condoning the worst excesses in exchange for profit. The message is as simple as the realities are hard and the suffering is deep. And Tiken Jah has the courage to say it out loud.

'Tiken Jah Fakoly' is released by Wrasse Records