Akiyo

Akiyo is a legendary groupe de tambours from Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, whose influences come as much from gwoka as from mizik a mas (carnival music).

Formed in 1978 during a time of strong pro independence demands and sentiment across the island, Akiyo became popular for reintroducing skin drums and traditional masks at carnival (which at the time had been replaced by plastic instruments and satin-sequin costumes) with the objective to revalorise Guadeloupean culture, and reconnect with its people’s origins through songs and disguises which often refer to the customs and myths of the island.

Michel Halley, one of the founding members of Akiyo (and a legendary gwoka tambouyé) says: “The drum is an instrument of expression, an instrument of joy, of sorrow, of celebration, for births, deaths, it is a unifying instrument. Akiyo is a current of thought, an ideological movement above all, a desire to do things. At the time of creation, we decided to have two fundamental axes: to safeguard the carnival, with its costumes, its music, its spirit of derision, everything that makes the carnival universal, and to work with the objective of affirming the Guadeloupean identity. To make a carnival particular to Guadeloupe and not resembling other carnivals around the world.”

Akiyo is a gwoup a po (“groupe à peaux” in French, meaning a group which uses drums made with animal skin, usually goats’) whose music is a modernised take on the mas a Senjan rhythm (named after a popular mid 20th century group), itself derived from the mendé rhythm, one of the seven rhythms of gwoka. Instead of “carnival”, a colonisers’ word, the group has always preferred using the term “mas” which designates both the disguise and the popular procession, nourished by animist traditions: a "parade'' intended to "scare", to shake up the established order, but also to transmit the culture inherited from the ancestors…

During a déboulé (the word translates literally as tumble, a typically colourful Creole way to describe the loud and raucous manner in which the group parades in the streets during carnival), bands are preceded by whip crackers, goatskin drummers, conch blowers and cha cha (local maracas) shakers. In the case of Akiyo they are usually followed by thousands of revellers.