The last Macumba of France closes its doors – L’Express

December 1982. François Mitterrand has been elected for a little over a year and a half, the Minitel has just landed in France, Jean-Jacques Goldman released his second album. Christine, she regularly spends her Saturday evenings on the dance floor of the Macumba d’Englos, in the North. In this vast 1,500 square meter complex, the young woman sings on Indochina tubes, dance on Michael Jackson, celebrates her birthdays. On the evening of her 25 years, she meets the one who will become her husband. A quarter of a century later, after her divorce, it was in the same place that she returned to dance “almost every week”, making the club and its customers “a second family”. “When I think about it, the Macumba punctuated a good part of my life, says this former civil servant. It is the only place where I arrive alone but where I know that I will find my bearings. It is a real place of sociability. “

Christine will soon have to say goodbye to the building with round architecture so recognizable. After almost fifty years of existence, the Macumba of Englos will close its doors on February 23. It was the last establishment of the channel in France. “It is not for financial reasons, but because our big boss wishes to take a well -deserved retirement,” says Dimitri Derepas, club operating director. 84 years old, Henri Souque, the said “big boss”, thus signed the end of an adventure started in the 1960s, in Oran, Algeria. With his brother-in-law Jean Calvo, the young man frequents a small establishment by the sea, “with huts and cement between the rocks, to taste mussels,” he told L’Express. Its name, the Macumba, will be taken up a few years later to baptize the first project of the two men on their return to France.

In 1966, they had the idea of ​​creating a large complex in Montpellier, which offered its customers to eat, drink, dance, and enjoy a swimming pool in the same place. “I like to say that we arrived at the right time in the right place. People wanted to celebrate, it was unheard of. And it took immediately,” recalls Henri Souque. Seven years later, entrepreneurs opened their second establishment in Mérignac, in the suburbs of Bordeaux. To ensure the modernity of their nightclub, they call on the architect Michel Petuaud-Létang, who will be at the origin of the circular form of Macumba establishments-inspired according to him “by the round side of dance”.

“We stood out by creating scenes on several levels to make girls dance, multifaceous walls to change atmosphere depending on music, round bars, immense rooms for the time …”, Lists the designer . The recipe works, and brews from the first few weeks all types of audiences: in 1973, women in long dresses from the very chic classical music festival MAI Musical, vacationers and workers of the Bordeaux suburbs all rub shoulders in Macumba de Mérignac. The chain then settled in Englos, then in Friborg (Switzerland), Nantes, Limoges or Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, in Haute-Savoie, where the largest Macumba in France is built, with its 6,000 square meters.

“Everything becomes easy”

In the early 1990s, no less than 23 Macumba – still installed in the heart of commercial areas, on the edge of big cities – made the French dance and revolutionized the world of the night. “The real added value of the Macumba is above all its parking lot. In a France where the regulations of alcohol driving do not yet exist, it is a synonym of freedom: you can go shopping, then eat And dance to the Macumba. Our commonplace. A geography of the contemporary world (Fayard, 2024). At a time when the zeniths have not yet come out of the ground and where the classic nightclubs welcome only a few hundred handpicked customers, the Macumba wins, according to the researcher, like “an amusement park Nocturne, accessible to all “, offering concerts and large evenings – to the point of eclipizing the traditional balls and village festivals.

In this France in the 1980s, many stars will occur, participating in the popularity of the brand. “When we had succeeded a little, we came to sing at Macumba,” recalls André Siarri, known as “Dédé”, managing director of several Macumba since the 1970s. The man remembers the professionalism of Johnny Hallyday and Sylvie Vartan on The scene of the Macumba of Mérignac, of the requirements of Claude François who wanted to be able to add his caravan of tour to a door which is specially reserved for him, or of an “unforgettable” evening to speak political around a glass with Daniel Balavoine.

“We have always adapted”

To guarantee the success of his nightclubs, the director confides having always listened to the modes of the moment, agreeing to bring the dancers of Saturday night fever In 1977, or Break Dance artists in the early 1980s. “We have always adapted: when we felt that the topless dancers on the tables were no longer really topical, we were able to stop. There was something for everyone in Macumba, “said Dédé. In parallel, the success of Jean-Pierre Mader’s song, in 1985, or the scenes shot at the Macumba of Englos in the film My enemy’s body (1976), with Jean-Paul Belmondo, contributed to Macumba a “mythical” place of French popular culture. “There is a real attachment around the Macumba, which refers to the fantasized image of the Thirty Glorious Years. But there is also a certain nostalgia mixed with tenderness for the slightly kitsch side of the club, which seems to belong to another era” , notes Martine Drozdz.

But even the Macumba is not eternal: from the beginning of the 2000s, several establishments closed in turn, victims of increased competition and the crisis that affects the economy of the night. “Little by little, the city centers have been reinvested as entertainment places, with the famous ‘streets of thirst’, cheaper and more accessible than discotheques located on the outskirts”, specifies Martine Drozdz. The rise of new festive scenes in Europe as well as the appearance of more affordable and easily transportable sound equipment gradually addict the evenings of the Macumba. The habits of the French, too, have changed: according to Martine Drozdz, the party has gradually “privatized”, while the dating and dance functions that discos have long been replaced by Internet and networks social. “We continue to party, but at home, with people we know, from the same social class, of the same age. This is also what explains the nostalgia for Macumba,” said the geographer.

In Englos, where the last Macumba brings together several thousand customers every week, it is precisely this social diversity that Dimitri Derepas already regrets, who readily compares his establishment to the film The Strange story of Benjamin Button. “At the opening at 3 pm, we have customers over 70 years old, and the night ends with young people of 25 years old. The club rejuvenates over the evening,” he jokes. For the final celebration, the director has already planned to offer his regulars a “surprise show” and a memorable “last dance”. Obviously, Christine will respond – not without a touch of melancholy. “I was proud of our last Macumba. It signs the end of an era: with whom I will dance on remixes of Granny BlueNOW ?”