By Tom Pryor with Iminza Keboge
Published March 5, 2021
Fely Tchaco, an African fashion designer and visual artist who combines art and fashion to express her creativity in her music and on stage has a new album set for world release on March 8, 2021.
The album that is titled Yita (Deep Water in English and Eau Profonde in French) explores various themes ranging from migration and human trafficking to social justice and the end of police brutality against civilians and is the fifth full-length album from the Ivorian-American singer, songwriter and performer whose real name is Leye Felicite Martin though she goes by her stage name, Fely Tchaco.
Yita is dedicated to African and Middle Eastern migrants who lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea to enter the Promised Land, Europe.
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The lyrics of Fely Tchaco, who sings in the languages she grew up speaking – Gouro, Bete, and Dioula – as well as English and French, are said to be inspired by current events, and always grounded in her own life experiences.
Fely Tchaco specialises in the traditional rhythms of the West African forest region, such as gbegbe, gahou, alloukou, and zaouli; Zaouli, a mask dance from her own Gouro people, was in 2017 inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The track Zaouli on the Yita album is a celebration of this special mask dance.
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“I am so grateful to be able to represent my culture as a Gouro woman, because there are not many of us. It is mostly men that are known in the crafts, arts and dance. I hope that I can add to that by celebrating not only the Gouro women but to celebrate the entire women all over the world who have contributed so much in art and music,” she says.
But just who is Fely Tchaco and what is the story of this woman who hails from sub-Saharan Africa?
Born Felicite Leye Tchaco in Yamoussoukro, she is said to have begun her singing and dancing career by first entertaining her parents and their friends with house concerts.
At the age of 15, the teenager started singing with local bands and then went on to join the resident band at Hotel President in Yamoussoukro.
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The budding artist moved on to the piano bars in San Pedro, a coastal resort town in which she is said to have performed cover versions of musicians such as Edith Piaff, Nana Mouskouri, Mirielle Mathieux, and other French chanson stars into her act.
Fely Tchaco’s repertoire — which also included traditional West African and Afro-Cuban and AfroColumbian sounds — was unusual for her generation, and made her stand out among her hip-hop and pop-influenced peers. Latin sounds in particular resonated with her, as they did with a previous generation of hitmakers all over Africa — and were the key to her early success.
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In 1996, at the age of 19, Fely Tchaco released her first album, Amour Perdu, as an independent artist distributed by Jat Music, a local subsidiary of EMI. This was followed by a second album in 1998, which launched her career internationally with her hit song Mon Espoir (My Hope), for which she won best music video for three months in a row on the national TV. The video featured American Actor Tiny Lister, best known for his role as Deebo in Ice Cube’s legendary Friday movies.
In 1998 Fely Tchaco was one of the ‘100 Most Influential Women in Cote d’Ivoire’ by AMINA magazine; but she had already set her sights even higher, relocating to the USA in 1999. After taking the time out to establish her residency, learn English, and pursue her education at City College of San Francisco, Fely returned to recording, releasing her American debut album, De Zere Gnan in 2004. This was followed by the Awareness EP in 2008 and the album Maturite in 2011.
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The following year, her song, Goba, off the album Maturite, won an Independent Music Award in the World Beat category. Another song from the same album, Toilata, received an honorable mention in the International Songwriting Competition in 2010, where she was among the top 10 finalists out of over 15,000 entries worldwide. She has collaborated with renowned composers such as Jerry Martin, former audio director at Electronic Arts. Serge Bile, an international author and journalist based in Martinique.
In 2016 the artist, who is based in San Francisco’s Bay Area, was invited by Bay Area musician Freddy Clarke to participate in a musical humanitarian trip to Greece, to perform and tour Syrian refugee camps, in celebration of the volunteer workers supporting the the refugees.
Besides her career, Leye Felicite Martin is a wife and mother.
