Polobi interview – “It’s the spirit of the island”
How Polobi reimagined Gwo Ka for the electronic era
It’s hard not to feel one or two prangs of jealously as Klod Kiavué flips his smartphone 180-degrees to show Juno Daily where he’s speaking from today. Even when seen through a digital lens, Guadeloupe’s thick jungle is spectacular. It seems to envelop every corner of our screen, the vegetation so dense you can almost feel humidity emanating from the device.
We’re not really here for the scenery, though. Instead, we have joined this call to chat through Abri Cyclonique by Polobi & The Gwo Ka Masters. Released in March 2023, the album has taken almost three years to realise, and gives listeners an opportunity to hear a contemporary take on this island nation’s most significant folk music canon, crafted by one of its masters – Moise Polobi. Alongside his friend and neighbour, Kiavué, the pair have created a modern interpretation of the sound, and a jumping off point from which outsiders can start to explore the history behind it.
“It all started because I use my house for jam sessions,” says Kiavué, quickly showing us a thatch-roofed structure on the veranda of his home, under which visiting musicians regularly perform. “At one of these evenings the French producer Valerie Malou was there. So, she met Polobi and that was the beginning of this adventure… She quickly became interested in his abilities.”
Translating Polobi’s words directly, we learn how the artist first became inspired by the legendary Guy Conquète, who he heard singing at a town fair as a young boy, igniting his passion for music. Polobi’s mother was a singer, too, and would also prove influential. However, Guadeloupe’s old cultural, political, and social structures meant she urged him not to pursue the drumming traditions that define Gwo Ka (Creole for ‘big drum’).
“Gwo Ka was the music of slaves, a way they used to express themselves. Then it became a sort of weapon. It was the most important way of expressing your feelings about the state, how people were treated, the colonial truth. It became a central element of Guadeloupe culture,” says Kiavué. “We are part of France, but we are not European. Polobi here is not European. He does not live in that way. You can see this is colonialism.
“So Gwo Ka had a hard time, the government was always hostile towards it, because of what it represents,” he continues. “It was forbidden by white men, forbidden by society. Then later they would enjoy you playing it, but after you would not be welcomed by the community. Now it has this very important role to play.”
A key change took place in the 1980s. As with many other Caribbean islands, post-World War II Guadeloupe’s Black communities attempted to move beyond that which was imposed by French rule, and establish an identity independent from European powers. Gwo Ka quickly spread through towns and villages as a mouthpiece for that movement, but it wasn’t until the Traité de Gwo Ka modên was published, circa 1981, that the culture was formalised with an artistic manifesto of its own.
By the end of the decade, the Festival de Gwoka Sentann, in the city of Sainte-Anne, was established. The series of events, including concerts and symposiums, lacked support from policymakers, but contributed to the sound’s resurgence. It also cemented its transition from participatory performance style built around set drum patterns and vocals layered during the improvised play of local community members, into a fixed style performed on stage at structured gigs.
“Now it has this very important role to play in society, because of that movement, this moment of consciousness. People wanted to find their roots and they tried through Gwo Ka. But earlier, in the 1960s, it was banned. A lot of the old guys died penniless in very bad conditions. Today, Gwo Ka is seen as a good thing… It means to be Guadeloupe,” Kiavué explains.
In many ways, Abri Cyclonique is far removed from the musical origins of Gwo Ka. With production duties handed to Liam Farrell, AKA Doctor L, electronic elements have been brought to the fore. The result is a collection that owes much to the original hypnotic lyrical and percussive style. But it also breaks from those. We ask how easy it was to rethink tradition.
“There have been people already including electronic music with Gwo Ka,” says Kiavué. “But this project is very different to the original form. And this is good because now it makes people care and want to know about the origin of the music. That’s my goal, to communicate with people, and most of the time you don’t have this opportunity. Now, we are bringing people to focus on this side of things – where this comes from.
“You know, we are a very small island, but we are alive. We have this wonderful biodiversity, and this album opens the doors for us to say ‘We are here’. It gives us something to make a proposition with: ‘Come learn about us and our culture and our island’,” he continues. “We changed the structure of the sound because we could, you know? This was not my idea, or Moise’s. It just happened. And very often that’s the way to make something interesting.”
Despite that evolution, Abri Cyclonique shares the same source material as everything Polobi has touched to date. Each day, he still heads into Guadeloupe’s wildernesses in search of natural inspiration. This is found at the flowing waters of the Moustique river, in the woodlands of Tanbou, or among the towering peaks of the interior landscape, with those sounds, caught on tape, the providing building blocks for arrangements.
As Polobi explains, through Kiavué’s translation, it’s for this reason that so many people consider Gwo Ka to be such an integral part of Guadeloupe’s modern culture and heritage. It is born from and made for the land itself, and conveys what the islands mean to those who live there. “In every town in Guadeloupe there is a Gwo Ka school. Maybe one, maybe two, maybe three. Everything you go to – a funeral a party – Gwo Ka is there. It is the soul of the island.”
Martin Hewitt