Cocody Rockin' with Alpha Blondy

While growing up, life wasn’t that good for Alpha Blondy. He was a citizen of the Ivory Coast and as such have gone through hardships and struggles. He was a rebel for most of his life. It was this root that made him attractive in the international audience in his release of the album Jah Glory in 1985.

Blondy believed reggae music as a spiritual celebration and as a tool for human liberation. His songs were a balance of outcries for justice and and more subtle and gentle homilies and touch of love songs. He was inspired for most by Bob Marley’s style of music during his youth.

He went to the States in 1976, where he soon made friends within the Jamaican community in New York City. He grabbed every chance and sang Marley’s songs around New York, performing in small clubs. He later made a name of himself for his self-composed reggae tunes, written in his peculiar French-inflected English. A rising Jamaican producer Clive Hunt pushed Blondy to write songs in his native tongue, Dioula, and in Ivory Coast Creole. The language, and Alpha’s very distinctive, quavering vocals, gave his songs the unmistakable accent of West Africa.

After returning home to Abidjan, he was sent to a notorious mental hospital following a dispute with a police officer. It was after he’s freed that he and won a national talent show that gave him the opportunity to record.
Blondy is esteemed as an astute, biting political commentator in today’s Ivory Coast. He never had second thought about speaking his mind. Some of his songs were banned in because of its aim on the recent political turmoil in the Ivory Cost.

“When you make a sword, you dip it many times in a liquid to make it hard. The Creator is dipping us again and again to make us stronger. Even though I complain, I’m not sad. I say, ‘Why me? Why not me?’ You have to accept he bad things in order to appreciate the good.” That’s Blondy, not taking a step back.

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