Zouk Music of Martinique

Music authors such as Carles De Ledesma and Gene Scaramuzzo draw zouk’s establishment to the Guadeloupe gwo ka and Martinican bele (tambour and ti bwa) as folk traditions. Jocelyn Guilbault an Ethnomusicologist though, defines zouk as a synthesis of Caribbean renowned styles, especially Dominica cadence-lyspso, Haiti cadence, Guadeloupean beguine. Zouk emerged in the late 1970s and the early 80s whereby using the elements of the former patterns of Antillean music as well as imported genres.

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Zouk emerged in the early to the mid-80s from the French Antilles kadnas and the cadence-lyspso of Dominica as popularized by the Grammacks and Exile One. The basics of gwo ka, tambour, and beguine vide and ti bwa are important in zouk. However there are different patterns of zouk in some commonalities exist. According to the French creole tongue of Martinique and Guadeloupe is a significant basic and are distinguish part of the music. Basically, zouk is based around the star singers with a little attention given to the instrumentalists and it is based almost on the whole of the studio recordings.

The Kassav band remains the best popular zouk group. Kassav drew in effects from balakadri abd bal gramoun dances, biguine’s and mazurka’s along with the most current Caribbean effects like compas, salsa, reggae music. zouk live concerts soon began to get on American and European rock and heavy metal customs and the genre spread throughout the world, mainly in developing countries.