Word.ws English Dictionary

soukous

soukous noun: a genre of African popular music, resembling rumba, that originated in the Congo region in the 1930s.

Noun

soukous (uncountable)

  1. A genre of African popular music, resembling rumba, that originated in the Congo region in the 1930s.
    • The title makes reference to Congolese soukous music, and so does Mr. Koenig’s guitar figure.2007 June 18, Kelefa Sanneh, “Preppie Afro-Pop and Other Odd Blends”, in New York Times

Origin of soukous

From French secouer (“to shake”).

Questions about soukous

What does soukous mean?
Soukous means a genre of African popular music, resembling rumba, that originated in the Congo region in the 1930s.
What part of speech is soukous?
Soukous is a noun.

Words near soukous in the dictionary

  1. soujee
  2. souk
  3. Souk Ahras
  4. Souk El Arba
  5. souklike
  6. soukous
  7. souks
  8. Soukup
  9. soul
  10. soul bell
  11. soul bells

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soukous (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “soukous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/soukous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.