pioneer

Amédée Pierre

Born Amédée Pierre Gnaoré Djedje

1937–2011

Ivorian roots-pop

About Amédée Pierre

Amédée Pierre is the figure every later Ivorian singer starts from. Working with his Ensemble Amédée Pierre from the early 1960s, he set Bété song forms against guitars and horns and built the template for a modern Ivorian popular record. Audiences called him the Dopé National, after the Bété word for nightingale. He kept performing into the 2000s and was honoured as a national cultural figure before his death in 2011.