The Ivorian footballer, Didier Drogba, is all the rage now. Time Magazine named him to its  annual “100 Most Influential People” list, largely because of his role  to end the civil war in Cote d’Ivoire’s civil war.  As Vanity Fair reported in 2007, “A single soccer match achieves what five years of combat and negotiations could not: an apparent end to Ivory Coast’s civil war. The man who brought the warring sides together was not a politician or a gun-toting strongman, but Didier Drogba, the star striker for Ivory Coast.” As a result, Drogba apparently has god-like status in his homeland. So much so that he even spawned a dance and music style: Drogbacite. He even has a beer named after him.

At a recent panel on the 2010 World Cup I hosted at The New School that view of Drogba’s influence basically held. Not so quick says Siddhartha Mitter, journalist and music critic, who is eminently qualified on matters Ivorian:

First, I need to set the record straight about Drogbacité– the whole “Drogba is God in RCI [the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire]” thing was highly overstated during the panel discussion. Here’s the original “Drogbacité” song by one-hit-wonder Shanaka Yakuza back in 2006. The football-move references kick in around 1:25.

(2) Compilation CD marketers, foreign football geeks, and Drogba himself all ran with the concept of course. But as a dance it came and went — just another ephemeral craze (like konami, prudencia, grippe aviaire, décalé chinois, etc) within the overall genre of coupé-décalé. Here.

(3) The “cité” suffix in Drogbacité picks up on the original style that launched coupé-décalé, “Sagacité,” invented in 2003 by the late Stéphane Doukouré aka Douk Saga. Drogbacité hit a high-water mark for coupé-décalé, which may have run out of steam a little at this point, with zouglou making a comeback.

(4) Drogba is an immense star in RCI and played a strong role in national reconciliation, although the portrayal given on the panel was a bit over the top. However, he is neither the first nor the last footballer to be turned into a musical icon, dating back to the late 1980s with Abdoulaye Traoré, known as “Ben Badi,” the ASEC-Africa rivalry, or former national team captain Gadji Céli, who transitioned into a singer.