Firmin Boubié Bazié, better known by his stage name Agozo, is a Burkinabé singer.

Life and career

Bazié was born in

Réo Réo is a city located in the province of Sanguié in Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory ...

, in

Sanguié Province Sanguié is one of the 45 provinces of Burkina Faso, located in its Centre-Ouest Region. In 2019 the population was 391,520. Its capital is Réo. Lyele is a major first language in this province. Education In 2011 the province had 218 primary s ...

, Burkina Faso. He is an ethnic Gurunsi. According to Bazié, he originally received the name Agozo from his grandmother in the form of the Gurunsi ( Lyélé) word "gbôzor", meaning "flat tô". Tô is a

millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most millets belong to the tribe Paniceae. Millets are important crops in the Semi-arid climate, ...

sorghum ''Sorghum bicolor'', commonly called sorghum () and also known as great millet, broomcorn, guinea corn, durra, imphee, jowar, or milo, is a species in the Poaceae, grass genus ''Sorghum (genus), Sorghum'' cultivated for its grain. The grain i ...

porridge and a Burkinabé dish. When Bazié was a child, he didn't like heated tô, only flat tô. His college friends felt that it didn't sound good, so they added an "a" and removed the "b" to give Agozo. Agozo first entered music in 1995 as part of the

zouglou Zouglou ( , ) is a dance oriented style of music originated from Ivory Coast during the mid-1990s. It started with students from a college of Gagnoa drawing on elements of other styles of music. Zouglou recounts the various social realities e ...

group Les Wôyô. In August 2016, a music event and contest ranking the size of women's bodies, which Agozo featured in and promoted, was reported on by

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

news networks such as

France24 France 24 ( in French) is a French state-owned publicly funded international news television network based in Paris. Its channels, broadcast in French, English, Arabic and Spanish, are aimed at the overseas market. Based in the Paris suburb ...

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

and

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

due to controversy surrounding it. The event was banned by the Burkina Faso Ministry of Women, National Solidarity and Family.

Discography

Albums

* ''La Go'' (2015) – draws on Gurunsi ''binon'' musical tradition and coupé-décalé from Côte d'Ivoire.

References

External links

Official Facebook
Burkinabe male singers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century male singers 21st-century male singers 21st-century Burkinabe people {{Africa-musician-stub