[17][18][19] The band's inception can be traced to Pierre-Edouard Décimus and Fréddy Marshall, members of the Guadeloupean ensemble Les Vikings, who aspired to innovate the island's traditional music by amalgamating it with contemporary influences.
[5][20] Their debut studio album, Love and Kadance, released in 1979, heralded the advent of zouk and served as the archetypical exemplar for the genre.
[21] With a discography of over 50 albums, encompassing both band and solo projects from its members,[22] Kassav' has achieved significant international recognition.
[24] Music of Guadeloupe and Martinique: Most authors credit Décimus, his brother Georges, the band's bassist and Desvarieux as its inventors.
With this hit song, zouk rapidly became a widespread dance craze in Latin America and the Caribbean, and was popular in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The especially gravelly singing voice of Desvarieux, Décimus's driving bass, Naimro's and Joseph's inventive keyboards and superior drum-machine-based and Vamur's solid jazz-inflected live percussion, along with dance party-inspiring simple French-creole lyrics are among unique Kassav' "trademarks".
Jocelyne Béroard's stunning "amateur" photography of natural scenes and people seen from her unique traveling-artist perspective's island-paradise visuals[33] could be cited among their songs' inspirations.
Originally formed solely of Guadeloupean artists (Decimus, Desvarieux, St-Eloi), within a few years Kassav' also embraced band members of Martinican ancestry (Béroard, Naimro, Marthely); their music is mostly compas that delved deep into synthesized sounds after exploring many acoustic timbres, with rhythms based fundamentally in a gwo ka (French Caribbean folkloric drumming/chanting) context, especially in earlier recordings.