Zouk is a musical movement pioneered by the French Antillean band

Kassav' Kassav' is a French Caribbean band formed in Guadeloupe in 1979. The core members of the band are Jacob Desvarieux, Jocelyne Béroard, Jean-Philippe Marthély, Patrick St. Eloi, Jean-Claude Naimro, Claude Vamur, and Georges Décimus (who left t ...

in the early 1980s. It was originally characterized by a fast tempo (120–145 bpm), a percussion-driven rhythm and a loud horn section. The fast zouk béton of

Martinique Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...

and

Guadeloupe Guadeloupe (; ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, Gwadloup, ) is an archipelago and overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the ...

faded away during the 1980s. Musicians from Martinique and Guadeloupe added

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

instrumentation to their compas style, which developed into zouk-love. Zouk-love is effectively the French

Lesser Antilles The Lesser Antilles ( es, link=no, Antillas Menores; french: link=no, Petites Antilles; pap, Antias Menor; nl, Kleine Antillen) are a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. Most of them are part of a long, partially volcanic island arc betwe ...

' compas.Popular Musics of the Non Western World. Peter Manuel, New York Oxford University Press, 1988, p74 Zouk gradually became indistinguishable from the genre known as

compas Compas, also known as compas direct or compas direk (; Haitian Creole: ''konpa'', ''kompa'' or ''kompa dirèk''), is a modern méringue dance music genre of Haiti. The genre was popularized following the creation of Ensemble Aux Callebasses in ...

. This light compas influenced the Cape-Verdean new generation.

Zouk béton

The original fast carnival style of zouk, best represented by the band

, became known as "zouk béton", "zouk chiré" or "zouk hard". Zouk béton is considered a synthesis of various French Antillean dance music styles of the 20th century:

kadans Cadence rampa ( ht, kadans ranpa, ), or simply kadans, is a dance music and modern méringue popularized in the Caribbean by the virtuoso Haitian sax player Webert Sicot in the early 1960s. Cadence rampa was one of the sources of cadence-lypso. ...

(cadence),

konpa are a type of Japanese drinking gathering held by university students in a casual drinking establishment called an izakaya, and are more relaxed than the traditional '' nomikai''. It is often suggested that this word originally came from ger ...

and

biguine Biguine ( , ; gcf, label=Antillean Creole, bigin) is a rhythm-centric style of music that originated from Saint Pierre, Martinique in the 19th century. It fuses Bèlè and 19th-century French ballroom dance steps with African rhythms. History ...

References

{{Authority control Caribbean music genres Martinican music Guadeloupean music Haitian music Dominica music Lesser Antillean music

Zouk béton

See also

References