The Belgian beat
Couleur Café is one of the most exciting events in Europe’s musical calendar, hosting some of the biggest names in African music. Dan Colwell gets swept up in the preparation for this year’s event
I’m walking along a street filled with the sounds of joyful, jangling electric guitars and African drum rhythms, and the aroma of such delights as chicken in peanut sauce and fried plantain, a Congolese speciality I’m devouring with great pleasure. It’s a steaming hot day and there are crowds of people milling about and chilling out with a cold beer. This isn’t Kinshasa, though, but Brussels last summer, where (every year) the vast Tours & Taxis site in Molenbeek is transformed into a slice of Africa for three extraordinary days.
Since it first burst onto the scene in 1990, Couleur Café has established itself as one of Europe’s greatest world music festivals. It’s the brainchild of Patrick Wallens and, at the festival’s small offices in a quiet Brussels suburb, he tells me that from the outset the intention was to offer more than just a music concert.
“We wanted it to have the whole ambience of being in Africa, so we also had a market, African hairdressers, African food stalls… It was a real taste of the world beyond Europe.”
The festival grew out of the world music explosion at the end of the 1980s, although Wallens’ connection with Africa goes far deeper than that. As a percussionist himself, Wallens had spent years organising dance and percussion courses for artists in Guinea and Senegal. This passion for African music merged with a long-term desire to launch a festival in Belgium featuring music from outside the European and American mainstream resulted in Couleur Café.
“We didn’t want to put on traditional African music, but the exciting contemporary music being played in modern African cities across the continent, from Senegal and Mali to Algeria and Congo. When we started, there wasn’t a festival like it anywhere in Europe.”
Inevitably, the event has evolved over the years. These days, alongside African and Caribbean music, you can hear salsa, reggae, ska, hip-hop, electro, soul and funk – in fact, anything that flows along the currents of black music in general. Wallens explains that, as it developed into a major festival, Couleur Café had to reflect its changing audience and appeal to a wider range of age groups and communities. After all, from an audience of 2,000 when it began, the festival now pulls in 75,000 people over its three days. But then the desire to break down boundaries was built into the very fabric of the Couleur Café from the start.
“It’s why the rough, industrial space of Tour & Taxis is so symbolic for us. It was once the old Customs House, the place where boundaries were set between who and what could come into Brussels. Now it’s about opening up the minds of different types of people to new music, food, culture. For us, mixing is the key – mixing people, mixing different styles of music, mixing famous acts and unknown talent, ” Wallens says.
The festival has indeed hosted many of the biggest names in African music over the years, such as Youssou N’Dour, Mory Kanté and Femi Kuti. Among the top stars performing at Couleur Café 2009 will be Khaled, the Algerian exponent of Rai, and German-born Patrice, who mixes reggae, soul and funk, and regularly sells out auditoriums.
But, as the organisers are quick to point out, one of the most important aims of Couleur Café is to have good live bands that bring a festive vibe to the event, whether they shift CDs by the million or not. Alpha Blondy, from the Ivory Coast, is relatively unknown, but his gigs invariably create a carnival atmosphere. “He’s a typical Couleur Café artist,” Irene Rossi, one of Wallens’ colleagues, tells me. “Maybe they’re not international recording stars, but on stage they’re the best.”
Other acts already booked for this year include Cesaria Evora, a brilliantly evocative singer from West Africa, and Amadou & Mariam also from West Africa, whose radical approach mixes traditional music with Western influences.
The festival is one of the Belgian capital’s great success stories of the past 20 years and Rossi, like Wallens, another 20-year veteran of Couleur Café, says that the sheer scale of organising its sponsorship, security and staff sometimes makes her wish they could go back to their roots as a small event. She’s determined, though, that the right ambience is created, no matter how big the festival has become.
“People say to me, this is what Brussels should be like every day, what life should be like – people smiling, talking to each other.”
For one weekend each year, at least, Couleur Café allows us to glimpse an ideal world where the best spirit of Africa appears at the heart of the capital of Europe.
Show up
Couleur Café will take place from 26-28 June 2009 at Tour & Taxis in Brussels. Visit couleurcafe.be for updates on the acts that will be performing and to book your tickets.