Alpha Blondy

Alpha Blondy
Alpha Blondy live at 013 Tilburg, Netherlands, 2016
Background information
Birth name	Seydou Koné
Born	(1953-01-01) 1 January 1953 (age 64) Dimbokro, Ivory Coast
Genres	Reggae
Occupation(s)	Singer/Songwriter
Years active	1981–present
Labels	EMI France, VP Records, Wagram Music, Shanachie Records
Associated acts	The Wailers, The Solar System
Website	AlphaBlondy.info alphablondyjahgloryfoundation.org

Alpha Blondy (born Seydou Koné; 1 January 1953 in Dimbokro,Ivory Coast) is a reggae singer and international recording artist. Many of his songs are politically motivated, and are mainly sung in his native language of Dioula, French and in English, though he occasionally uses other languages, for example, Arabic or Hebrew.

First son of a family of eight children, Seydou Koné was raised by his grandmother, growing up in what he described as "among elders", which later was to have a big impact on his career. In 1962, Alpha Blondy went to join his father in Odienné, where he spent ten years, attended Sainte Elisabeth High School, and was involved in the Ivory Coast students movement. In high school, he formed a band, but this hobby affected his schooling and he was expelled due to poor attendance. His parents then sent him to study English in Monrovia in the neighboring country of Liberia in 1973. He spent thirteen months there and then moved to the United States of America to improve his English.

In 1974, Seydou moved to New York where he majored in English at Hunter College, and later in the Columbia University American Language Program because he wanted to be a teacher. In New York he met Rastafarians for the first time, and was also able to see concerts by Jamaican artists such as Burning Spear. Seydou was involved in multiple altercations in New York and returned to the Ivory Coast, where he got into even more trouble until he met up with one of his childhood friends, Fulgence Kassi, who had become a noted television producer. This was the beginning of his real career as a musician, and he began to use the name "Alpha Blondy".

After various TV shows for Kassi, Blondy recorded his first solo album in 1982, entitled Jah Glory. This album was to have enormous success and would become later a symbol of resistance because of the song "Brigadier Sabari," which documents his experience of being arrested in Abidjan in the 1980s and his subsequent mistreatment by the police. Alpha Blondy became a big star in Abidjan with his own African twist of Reggae music, becoming in the eyes of his fans "the Bob Marley of Africa". Alpha Blondy is spiritual, political and positive just like Marley himself, and even recorded a cover of Bob Marley's song "War". In order to reach more people with his message, he chose to sing in many languages: English, French, Baoulé, and his native language – Dioula. Later, he also brought new instrumentation to his brand of reggae such as the violin and cello.