They are a new, warm, festive, and ambitious group. Made up of three Abidjan-based singers—Jahelle Bonee, Ruth Tafebe, and Reine Ablaa—the female trio Les Perles des Lagunes sings in English, French, Baoulé, and Tagmana, delivering a striking blend of Afrobeat, house, jazz, and highlife.
Laughter fills the dressing rooms in Rabat, where Les Perles des Lagunes have just performed their first international concert at the Visa for Music festival. The trio reflects enthusiastically on the experience. “We feel incredibly energized,” says Ruth Tafebe. Jahelle Bonee adds, “I feel grateful. We are very happy to represent Côte d’Ivoire this way. We also hope this is the beginning of great things.”
Three Worlds in Fusion
Les Perles des Lagunes was born in 2025 during an artistic residency at MASA Lab, the incubator of the Abidjan Performing Arts Market, under the artistic direction of singer and producer Blick Bassy. Asked about the origin of their name—which evokes both the nickname of their hometown and the mystical feminine figure of Mamie Wata—the trio answers with humor. “It’s three pearls that rolled toward each other by the lagoon and said, ‘We’re too beautiful like this. What if we traveled together?’ And each pearl, with its own glow and story, created this beautiful jewel.”
Although the group is new, each artist brings a rich musical background to the project. Ruth Tafebe’s music was shaped in her early albums around classic Afrobeat. Today, she is turning toward highlife, a Ghanaian-inspired genre that was very popular in West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, which she hopes to revive.
Jahelle Bonee, who has released two albums—Béflehmi in 2018 and Meet My Soul in 2023—draws her deeply warm groove from jazz. A jazz “with Ivorian colors,” she explains, having performed across cities throughout the country. Her sound naturally blends jazz with hip-hop, blues, and traditional Ivorian rhythms. These traditional rhythms also fascinate Reine Ablaa, whose dynamic and electronic afro-house music is built on ancestral beats, with a distinctly Ivorian sound.
Their musical universes are rich and diverse. The easy choice would have been to rely on each artist’s individual repertoire and talent. Instead, Les Perles des Lagunes chose fusion. All the selected songs were rearranged, danced, and sung together. On stage, dressed in black and adorned with magnificent jewelry—pearls included—the trio unleashes a phenomenal and highly contagious energy.
Celebrating Ivorian Languages
“Les Perles des Lagunes is Ivorian music, differently,” says Jahelle Bonee. Their music proudly highlights the richness of Côte d’Ivoire’s linguistic heritage. They sing a little in French, but mostly in Baoulé and Tagmana. The 78 languages spoken in Côte d’Ivoire deeply inspire them. “It’s a country that is very francophone too, especially with Nouchi. But our local languages tend to be less shared. It’s time we promoted them,” affirms Ruth Tafebe. On the song “Massacho” (“Queen” in French), she sings in Tagbana, her father’s language, for the first time. Within the group, the radiant Reine Ablaa sings mainly in Baoulé, representing Akan culture, notably through songs like “Pakinou” and “Mériou,” inspired by a traditional game played among women in Côte d’Ivoire.
Strength Through Female Unity
Les Perles des Lagunes also bring together their audiences and networks in remarkable harmony. “With women, it works,” says Jahelle Bonee. “It’s a bit more complicated with men. I feel very good with these two queens, from whom I learn a lot.” The songs are not necessarily feminist, but they offer “female perspectives,” explains Ruth Tafebe. Above all, as Reine Ablaa passionately emphasizes, “the universe played a role in merging our energies. We are three different entities who managed to communicate. No one would guess that we were not originally a group.”
An exciting trio, Les Perles des Lagunes continue to perform across Africa and are already dreaming of recording their first album.