The Macumba located in Englos will close its doors permanently. The club was the last to bear this name, symbol of the prosperous years of nightclubs. The end of an “era” for many faithful, while the number of nightclubs continues to plummet in France.
Long synonymous with wild evenings, it is a name which today refers to a slightly more outdated imagination. While the number of nightclubs continues to decrease in France, the last Macumba in France, located in the North, will close its doors. The box will close after 49 years of activity, as relayed by La Voix du Nord.
“It is with emotion that we announce that the last Macumba in France will permanently close its doors on Sunday February 23, 2025”, a day during which the nightclub will be open from 3 p.m., as usual, the club announced on Facebook. managers of the nightclub located in Englos, near Lille.
“More than just a nightclub”
If they do not specify the reason for the closure, the owners of the place obviously thank the teams of employees and partners, but also the generations of partygoers who “make this place much more than a simple nightclub: a real place of life, meeting and joy” but also “a French institution, a refuge for dance lovers and a place of conviviality”.
“Even if the curtain falls, the memories we created together will remain engraved in our hearts,” it is still written.
In Englos, the owners of Macumba are calling on the establishment's faithful to come “until the end of the night, for the last dance”, Saturday February 22 and Sunday February 23.
In response to the Facebook post, hundreds of people shared their emotion, talking about “unforgettable evenings” in a “great club”. With nostalgia and often bitterness, many evoke the end of an “era”.
The end of a French saga lasting almost 60 years
Established in 1975, the “Macumba Lille”. It was one of the 23 establishments of the Macumba franchise, born in 1966 with the creation of a leisure club including a nightclub in Montpellier, explained one of the founders Henri Souque to La Voix du Nord in 2015.
-The name, which has become a reference brand throughout France, was a reference to a beach bar located in Oran, Algeria, where Henri Souque had deployed as soldiers alongside the future co-founder of the franchise, Jean Calvo , another pied-noir.
Starting from Montpellier, the Macumba project spread with the installation of an establishment exclusively at night in Mérignac, near Bordeaux. The recipe works, partners and investors are flocking, so that the brand will establish itself further north, in Englos in particular, but also in Switzerland in Fribourg, in Spain in Madrid or even in Cuba in Havana.
Jean-Pierre Mader's song, simply titled Macumba and released in 1985, will end up establishing the name of these establishments in popular culture.
Coming from Brazilian, the word “macumba” designates in particular a famous beach in Rio de Janeiro, but also, originally, all the religious practices of the populations of West Africa before and after they were reduced in slavery in Brazilian territories. Nothing to do, therefore, with any dance.
Central to nightlife culture until the 1980s and 1990s, nightclubs are now in decline. A Sacem study pointed out in 2014 that France had 4,000 nightclubs in the 1980s and another 2,000 at the start of the 2010s. In 2021, the National Union of Nightclubs and Leisure Places counted less than 1,500, a further drop by 60% in a few decades, during the reopening period after confinements.
