Abi Reggae Festival
Reggae · Palais de la Culture, Treichville, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
Reggae — Côte d’Ivoire
Abi Reggae — Abidjan's international reggae festival — was born in 2015 on the initiative of Moussa Dosso, then a minister of State and a reggae devotee. Its first edition, April 9–12, 2015 at the Palais de la Culture Bernard-Dadié de Treichville, gathered the cream of world reggae: Alpha Blondy, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Ky-Mani Marley, Morgan Heritage, Third World, Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt of the I-Threes.
The festival had a singular format: scholarly conferences in the morning — Pan-Africanism, Rastafari, Caribbean-African links, with intellectuals such as Hélène Lee and Julius Garvey, son of Marcus Garvey — and concerts at night, around a reggae village. It billed itself as the first international reggae festival of this scale on the African continent.
After a second edition in 2016, the third, April 6–9, 2017 — dubbed « the festival of maturity », with U-Roy, Ijahman Levi, Julian Marley, Danakil and Yaniss Odua — remained the last: no later edition has taken place or been announced, and the festival's official website is no longer online. Festival TV keeps this page as the record of an event that mattered in the history of African reggae.
Watch
France 24's report on the first edition of Abi Reggae (Abidjan, 2015) — a report, not a trailer, contrary to what the document suggested; we present it for what it is:
Abi Reggae, the 2015 first edition in Abidjan — report by France 24