Akiyo, Voukoum

GPS Ses Régie Le Plan presents: Akiyo Voukoum

World Music Cities Festival.

Akiyo is a music group; its drums rang out at the end of the 1970s in the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre during the carnival. Constituted as a cultural movement, Akiyo aims to revitalize Guadeloupean culture during carnival and beyond. Its commitment and its anchoring in identity became its DNA from the start; in place of satin-and-glitter costumes, they will bring a new writing of their space-time: they reframe the body as a space of history, a social and political site. Masks, costumes, and instruments are reconsidered and used to speak to the issues affecting Guadeloupe. The Saint-Jean rhythms inform their music. Its very name arose from the public's questioning — “a ki yo?”, “but who are they?”. Pioneer and elder of the “gwoup a po” (drum-skin groups), Akiyo carried this movement far beyond the archipelago and remains a reference in Guadeloupean cultural resistance, including the social struggles — such as the general strike of 2009 — to the memory of slavery.

Born in 1988 in the working-class districts of Basse-Terre, Voukoum — “chaos, ruckus, tumult” in Creole — is a cultural movement defined as “an organized disorder” in the service of a new cultural order drawn from the roots “fondal natal.” Its motto, On Larèl On Lèspri, sums up a conception of culture tied to the Guadeloupean way of life, customs and traditions. Through carnival, the movement has revalued traditional masks and the return to ancestral music — mizik a mas gwo siwo, carried by the tanbou-ka —, where collective trance reconnects with a sacrality of African descent. A pillar of Bas-Terre carnival for many years, Voukoum has recently been the subject of an essay by anthropologist Flore Pavy, Voukoum, esprits rebelles du carnaval guadeloupéen (Éditions de la MSH - 2025), stemming from a thesis honored by the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery. A film by François Perlier traces its history; documentary, 52 min, 2012.