Tiken Jah Fakoly

Well supported

Doumbia Moussa Fakoly, born 23 June 1968 in Odienné in north-western Côte d'Ivoire, was born into a family of griots — which is the point rather than the trivia, because a griot's inherited job is to say in public what others cannot. He formed his first group, Djelys, in 1987, and by the late 1990s was West Africa's most exposed political voice in reggae. His subjects are neo-colonialism, corruption and African unity: the 2002 album Françafrique took its title from the term for France's continuing grip on its former colonies, and "Plus rien ne m'étonne" and "Ouvrez les frontières" are argument set to a rhythm rather than protest gestures. Death threats drove him into exile in Mali in 2003, and he has continued to record and tour from there and from Bamako. He is generally named with Alpha Blondy as the pair who made Ivorian reggae a form of its own.