Zouk - Origins

Origins

Zouk origins can be traced back to the West Indies, having come out of the French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the early to mid-1980’s. In Jocelyn Guilbault’s seminal book on the subject, “Zouk: World Music in the West Indies,” she states that “Zouk is the creation of black, Creole-speaking Antillean artists,” and puts forth the theory that it is the product of the struggle to form some kind of national identity among the four islands, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica and St. Lucia. All four share a similar colonial past, having been under both French and English rule at various points in their history, and are populated predominantly by blacks, who are the descendants of African slaves. The word “zouk” comes from the Creole word meaning “party,” and is such a part of everyday life that a common phrase heard on the islands is “When you hear zouk, you feel at home.”

Music authors Charles De Ledesma and Gene Scaramuzzo trace zouk's development to the Guadeloupean gwo ka and Martinican bèlè (tambour and ti bwa) folk traditions. Ethnomusicologist Jocelyn Guilbault, however, describes zouk as a synthesis of Caribbean popular styles, especially Dominica cadence-lypso, Guadeloupean biguine, and Haitian cadence. Zouk arose in the late 1970s and early 1980s, using elements of previous styles of Antillean music, as well as imported genres.