Sorry breh, couldn't answer earlier because I get no alert when I'm tagged
So about that Jennifer Dias song, the accent is not weird, it's even pretty clear french. There are some portuguese phrases because she's cape verdean but still, it's pretty understandable. In the chorus, she says "Prends ma main, viens danser, hé !" (Take my hand and come to dance, hey !").
It's hard to phonetize that because you english speakers don't have nasal vowels like us French or Portuguese speakers do... even Spanish and Italian people have huge problems with those even though with have the same root language-wise (latin) because in theirs, all their vowels are pronounced.
For example, pr
ends, m
ain, v
iens, d
anser : all the underlined letters constitute a nasal vowel (like in croiss
ant) so that may be why you can't properly decipher the lyrics even when reading them. But holla at me if you need some translations : zouk love tracks are pretty easy lyrics wise.
And about the music itself. It's from the french west Indies (Guadeloupe and Martinique mostly) and was popularized by Kassav', La Compagnie Créole and Francky Vincent in the late 80's/ early 90's. It's more high tempo, made to party to dance and bring positive mood through positive lyrics (the carribean way). But Zouk also can be about sad things with a little slower tempo and Kassav' did that pretty well through lead singer Jocelyn Beroard.
The links you and @horse.kills showed were not really Zouk in fact, it was more "Zouk love", a slowed down, RnB'd, modern version of Zouk which content is mostly about love, or other sentimental soft bullshyt
As you can see, I'm not really a fan of zouk love because I think it's not a diverse enough type of music (same rhythm, same content over and over...) but still, here's one of my fav Zouk Love songs and one of my fav artists (Slaï) from this genre :
We french west indians had our own Michael Jackson with Jean-Michel Rotin (listen to his voice and vocalizes in the following links
). He was the first real zouk love artist, the real godfather. I liked him too as a youngin (Slaï came way after him) :
Then if you want the real zouk, here are a few Kassav tracks which shows some diversity and why they the GOAT at it.
Grew up with those tracks
(to be continued)