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Mapouka emerged in the 1990s in Abidjan's urban neighborhoods, particularly in the city's youth clubs and dance halls. The dance style was initially popularized by Ivoirian musicians such as Youssouf Diawara and Les Dossiers de l'Afrique, who incorporated Mapouka into their music videos and live performances. Over time, Mapouka evolved and spread throughout Côte d'Ivoire, with various artists and dance troupes contributing to its development.
Originally known as "la danse du bas-ventre" (lower belly dance), traditional Mapouka was performed exclusively during celebrations of life and transitions to the afterlife, with precise, controlled movements of the posterior and pelvis. However, as it migrated from rural villages to the urban entertainment hubs of Abidjan in the 1980s and 1990s, its context shifted dramatically. Disconnected from its ritual roots, Mapouka became a form of nightclub entertainment, often stripped of its ceremonial dignity and presented as purely provocative. This rebranding led to a brief but highly publicized ban by the Ivorian government in the late 1990s, which decried the dance as obscene. Ironically, the ban had the opposite effect: it transformed Mapouka into a symbol of youthful rebellion and national identity, cementing its place in the Ivorian cultural imagination. Mapouka emerged in the 1990s in Abidjan's urban