Acrobatic, goofy and super-fast: the biama battles redefining Ivorian dance culture

The dancer, named after the Ivorian palm nut delicacy, was competing in a series of street dance battles set to biama, a frenetic offshoot of coupé-décalé, a type of percussive dance music popular across west Africa that originated in Côte d’Ivoire around the turn of the century.

A neighbourhood square in Yopougon-Selmer had been transformed into a dance arena for the event, which got under way about six hours after its advertised midday start. The performers were all under 25, with some as young as five. Audience members, some munching on skewered meat or drinking from beer bottles or plastic cups, periodically joined in as one competitor after another showcased intricate footwork and dramatic chest pops.

“This [is a] small ceremony so that people can see the talent we have … a talent that God has given to each of us to share with the whole world,” says Sauce Graine, a 15-year-old whose real name is Arnold and who began dancing to biama six years ago.

“Since many people aren’t very familiar with the dance yet, they think it’s just a neighbourhood thing. All we have to do is create the dance so that more people can see it and love it.”

Alongside the local strain of hip-hop known as maïmouna – a new fusion of coupé-décalé and rap Ivoire – biama has become emblematic of the resurgence of Ivorian pop culture over the past decade.

There is some debate over exactly when biama emerged, but it exploded in popularity after the coronavirus pandemic as young people turned to TikTok to post and respond to dance challenges that fused acrobatics with goofiness that pushed bodies to their limits.

“Biama is basically coupé-décalé 2.0, like at 200% speed,” says Cédric Kouamé, a music producer and chief archivist at Baoulecore Archive Center in the Angrè district of Abidjan. “Like maïmouna, it comes from Yopougon . Most trends start [in] Yopougon. It is basically where a lot of artists started their career.”

For decades, this working-class district has dictated the cultural zeitgeist of both Abidjan and Côte d’Ivoire. Stéphane Doukouré, better known as Douk Saga, grew up there before founding coupé-décalé with his Jet 7 crew after returning from Paris in the early 2000s. There, he had made a name for himself in a nightclub frequented by wealthy young partygoers by setting light to thousands of euros.

Their genre championed the philosophy of sagacité – the shrewdness needed to outwit authority – alongside farotement, the flamboyant display of wealth. Its free-spending hedonism offered escapism from many Ivorians living through the country’s civil war.

Doukouré’s career was short-lived. He died from lung disease in 2006 at the age of 32.

The genre was propelled to new heights by Ange Didier Houon, who was born in Yopougon to an icon of the Ivorian sound engineering industry. In his teens, his Lebanese friends gave him the stage name DJ Arafat, after the Palestinian political leader.

One of his earliest breakthrough hits as a teenager was 2003’s Jonathan, a homage to a DJ friend killed in a motorbike crash. Over time, he increased the tempo of his music to match the high-energy, acrobatic roukaskas routines devised by his dancers, drawing on traditional Ivorian dance.

Their feet shuffling quickly in lêkê – the ubiquitous Ivorian water-resistant plastic sandals – the dancers performing Arafat’s roukaskas continued a long tradition of audience participation in Ivorian popular music.

Arafat’s following grew so large that fans referred to themselves as “the Chinese”. But after his death in another motorbike collision in August 2019, many believed the genre, already showing signs of decline, was nearing its end.

Today, a new generation of artists is vying to be the next megastar of Ivorian pop. Among those hoisting the flag for maïmouna are Didi B, who has gained international recognition, and the more street-famous Himra. The rappers’ rivalry entered a new phase last year when both filled stadiums just weeks apart in different parts of the country.

Biama remains the more popular of the two subgeres, particularly among children and young people, who proudly call themselves biamaseurs and eagerly accept dance challenges shared across social media. “Biama is, first of all, a dance for the immature,” the popular dancer Kalomaman said in a recent interview.

Kouamé argues that dance has always been inseparable form Ivorian music. “Since the beginning of Ivorian music, as artists were creating their sounds, they were also thinking of the dance moves,” he says.

He cited the example of Ernesto Djédjé, a superstar of Ivorian music who emerged in the 1970s, who created ziglibithy, a music and dance style whose name comes from a Bété phrase meaning “delicious rhythm”.

“Since we were very young, each six months there was a new dance move that we had to learn,” Kouamé syas.

Midway through the event in Yopougon, Kehou Mousso – a biama dancer and one of the genre’s few female musicians – took to the stage to loud cheers. Wearing a waist-length orange wig and frilled green outfit, she and four of her dancers came as special guests.

Known to her 2.6 million TikTok followers as the “queen of coupé-décalé”, she says the frenetic biama choreography demands constant improvisation. “You have to be improvising every second.”

Some cultural observers in Côte d’Ivoire dismiss the genre as little more than “street music”, but biamaseurs remain undeterred. “People will love us,” Sauce Graine says. “They will dance [and] little by little, they will spread the word through their social networks. Then it will take off.”