Le Diouck and Bamao Yende: La Cou Cou - © naima
Le Diouck and Bamao Yende: La Cou Cou - © naima
Story of Cultural Interest

La Cou Cou

aL oCu uCo

Photography by Harley Weir

They’re both unlike anyone I’ve ever met, I suppose that was the initial charm. When I first encountered Magueye (Le Diouck), I was sitting at a café with a couple of friends and he rocked up in a djellaba, blonde wig, and cowboy boots. Was it cowboy boots? I can’t remember. What I do remember is thinking I’d never seen some shit like that before. He’s got a raspy ass voice. Baritone as hell. Something that’s always great in his music is when he switches from regular baritone to depths-of-the-mountain baritone. He stood there explaining how he had walked past a group of crackheads and even they were of afraid of him: this tall, very thin, Fulani-type brother, in his djellaba and a blonde wig. I’d seen all types of crazy style, especially in New York, but Mag was always pushing it. Bamao, I met for the first time in Marseille. He’s got something special about him too, a direct contrast to Mag. He’s soft-spoken. Impeccably dressed. Sometimes his facial hair is dyed white. He and Magueye live together – they’re like brothers. Bamao produces the beats – not all of them, but many of them, for Magueye. I’ve never really known how to describe their music. That’s probably why I like it so much. Bamao released his own solo album last year, RDV Discoteca, where he experiments with some wild sounds. Le Diouck has been releasing a series of singles coming from his new album, one being a great track called Vert Fané. These photographs were taken at their home which everybody calls La Cou Cou.

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New Black Surrealism

If Dubois posed a “double-consciousness,” defining it as the strange sense of two-ness, the split-self of the black person displaced in another land becoming “two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,” then, now, it is appropriate to suggest that double has multiplied. We live in a time where there’s cause for the advent of a triple, or quadruple, or perhaps best put, a multi-consciousness. The diasporic black experience is uniquely marked by a permeating sense of dichotomy, between the sense of blackness and the opposing realities and ideals of the society the black person is displaced in. What is of vital interest is the additional layers of consciousness that have arrived with the passage of time, for the children of the second, third or fourth generation, of whom there isn’t the imminent displacement from one to another, only the idea of another place, or the teachings and passings on through previous generations of ideals, myths, religion, and sensibilities. It is strange enough, that one is taught and raised in the African common belief of the unseen, and then lives in a secular West. But, the contemporary phenomenon of multi-consciousness isn’t limited to race or diasporic displacement alone, it is shared by most – we live between multiple realities: the Internet, the television, day-to-day life, the realities of the various ideologies and religions of the present era. Layers of reality that topple over one another, producing a mass state of confusion, and a subsequent search to remedy it. But, the black person, now, perhaps lies at the base of the flame, in an exaggerated chasm, facing the conflicting realities of the contemporary world, and dragging on in a perpetual state of non-belonging that ultimately produces this new, unique form of existence – a surreal existence, which in turn, has led to, in the case of a few chosen artists that represent this new sub-movement in art, a body of work that I want to call New Black Surrealism.

Stories of Cultural Interest

For our Stories of Cultural Interest, we highlight five artists that are representative of our manifesto – each emblematic of a convergence of contraries. Richard Hell, writer, poet and musician, Le Diouck and Bamao Yende, whose musical style combines a multi-influence of sounds like electronic, hip-hop and rock, Fabien Vilrus, whose work navigates the feelings of displacement between Reunion Island and France, Abraham Toledano, who owns one of the largest Japanese fetish magazine collections in the world in his apartment in Paris, and Freeka Tet, a multi-disciplinary artist who constantly drifts between technology, music and video.

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New Black Surrealism
New Black Surrealism
New Black Surrealism
Story of Cultural Interest
New Black Surrealism
Story of Cultural Interest
New Black Surrealism
Story of Cultural Interest
Story of Cultural Interest
Story of Cultural Interest
New Black Surrealism
New Black Surrealism
New Black Surrealism
New Black Surrealism