Firmin Boubié Bazié, better known by his stage name Agozo, is a Burkinabé singer.

Life and career

Bazié was born in

Réo Réo is a city located in the province of Sanguié in Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, ...

, in

Sanguié Province Sanguié is one of the 45 provinces of Burkina Faso, located in its Centre-Ouest Region. In 2019 the population was 391,520. Its capital is Réo. Lyele is a major first language in this province. Education In 2011 the province had 218 primary s ...

, Burkina Faso. He is an ethnic

Gurunsi Gurunsi or Grusi may refer to: * Gurunsi people, a people of northern Ghana and south and central Burkina Faso ** Gurunsi languages The Grũsi or Gurunsi languages, also known as the East Mabia languages,Bodomo, Adams. 2020.Mabia: Its Etymologic ...

. According to Bazié, he originally received the name Agozo from his grandmother in the form of the Gurunsi ( Lyélé) word "gbôzor", meaning "flat tô". Tô is a

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets al ...

sorghum ''Sorghum'' () is a genus of about 25 species of flowering plants in the grass family (Poaceae). Some of these species are grown as cereals for human consumption and some in pastures for animals. One species is grown for grain, while many othe ...

porridge and a Burkinabé dish. When Bazié was a child, he didn't like heated tô, only flat tô. His college friends felt that it didn't sound good, so they added an "a" and removed the "b" to give Agozo. Agozo first entered music in 1995 as part of the zouglou group Les Wôyô. In August 2016, a music event and contest ranking the size of women's bodies, which Agozo featured in and promoted, was reported on by Western news networks such as France24,

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

and

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

due to controversy surrounding it. The event was banned by the Burkina Faso Ministry of Women, National Solidarity and Family.

Discography

Albums

* ''La Go'' (2015) – draws on Gurunsi ''binon'' musical tradition and coupé-décalé from Côte d'Ivoire.

References

External links

Official Facebook
Burkinabé male singers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century male singers 21st-century male singers 21st-century Burkinabé people {{Africa-musician-stub