Why I’ll kill you and mourn with your music

Cameroonians are quick to refer to football as the nation’s most binding social glue. This, no doubt, is true. But truer still, is the fact that music unites Cameroonians far more than football does.

Music from every part of the country is accepted in every part of the country. Musicians from the South of Cameroon enjoy huge patronage in the West and vice-versa. Prince Afo-‘Akom is a star in Yaounde and beyond; so too is Lady Ponce a star in Bamenda and elsewhere in the Northwest Region.

Hard boiled proponents of the secessionist Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, are often seen practically outclassing Beti indigenes in dancing to “Bikutsi” music. Youths from typical English speaking background have been known to make and play “Makossa” music for passion, fame and the pecuniary returns this genre brings.

In a sense, music, by mere dint of its enchanting and captivating lyrics of melody, harmony and rhythm is an irresistible opium. Only the deaf can state otherwise.

Music could be very therapeutic, depending of course, on the genre. It calms nerves as well as jangles them. Music is employed as a soothing balm at funerals. It comes handy when factors like love, comfort and devotion are most in need. Plus, it is invoked to incite war, hatred and other preferred sentiments. Music is also effective in the field of sports, especially aerobatics. Music, as a renowned sage once put it, is food for the soul.

Above all, very unlike sportsmen and women aging and eventually dying with their sport, music outlasts musicians and composers. Some of it, like good wine, gets better with age.

However, it is difficult to state that like sportsmen, most music can conveniently put food on the table, pay utility bills and put a decent roof over one’s head, like football does. This is because whereas successful footballers are relatively few, well remunerated and pampered, musicians today, proliferate the landscape. They are pirated; many of them do drugs, just to belong to the Joneses and so can hardly survive from doing voices and playing the guitar, so to speak.

Technological advances have affected the music trade in a way. In the days of yore, the average musician spent time and devotion, learning the strings, keyboard and other lyrical tricks. Musicians were inspirational, so to speak. That is no longer so. Any Tom Dick and Harry, eager to run into cheap fame can just dash into the next studio, ask a producer to programme the electronic instruments and scream himself into the music charts. It is this class that talks big and craves media publicity.This mostly explains why the mortality rate of today’s music is frighteningly high.

Ace journalist and popular musician, David Evelle Mbua, aka Evelle Kool muses: ‘’ Music out of inspiration should be captivating, affectionate, thematic and ought to have natural effects. It should stand the test of time like the one left for posterity by the likes of Emmanuel Eboua Lotin, Francis Bebey, Manu Dibango, and Charles Epie, aka Etub’Eyang, to name but these.”

Evelle Kool acknowledges the fact that praise music, especially that which touches on faith and religion sometimes possesses mercenary intentions and inclinations, especially when pop stars of yesteryears suddenly revert to Gospel music. This tendency, he feels, is fuelled by the increasing number of so called faith or Holy Spirit churches, known to group such fanatics that are ready to patronize their singing pastors.

Evelle also talks of cheerleaders who have taken refuge in music and who praise rich politicians in song and get remunerated for their effort. It is common these days, for the filthy rich to conscript desperate, or simply put, hungry artists and pay up for their bidding to be done; they pay, as it were, to be depicted in lustrous colours, even when it is clear that the payers of the piper ought to belong where thieves are sentenced to spend time for obvious criminality.

Time was, for example, when musicians were few, worked extremely hard; earned every grain of their popularity and was adequately remunerated by way of a well organized system of copyright dues. In which case, every single time that a musician’s piece was played on radio; it was appropriately recorded by a copyright clerk of the radio station in question. Relatively handsome compensation was then made to the one on a quarterly basis.

Such times have long been overtaken, or have simply been covered by an avalanche of corruption, impunity and other forms of mismanagement. Piracy that is facilitated by modern technology has practically rendered the average Cameroonian musician poor, very poor. It is common to find the very talented amongst them, playing even at kindergarten birthday parties for starvation sums of money, enough only to put two or three meals on the table.

The confusion in the Ministry of Culture, whereby, musicians have spent the greater part of the last five years or so, fighting avoidable battles in various camps hasn’t helped in the least. Evelle Kool believes, however, that this Ministry has in a sense, lived up to expectation. And he has the recent case in which guitars and cash were handed over to certain deserving artists to show for it.

Whatever the case, Cameroon boasts several genres of music. Cameroon has produced world class musicians over the years. Makossa has a Cameroonian trademark. Makossa has, over the years, been exported to every nook and cranny of the world; to nations in which good musical taste is appreciated and consumed.

Bikutsi is popular, worldwide; so too is Mangambeau and Njang. You can’t talk about the Assisko, without tracing it back to Cameroon. How this is played and danced, is unique to this country.

Some of the best musical stars ever known in the musical world, like James Brown and Michael Jackson are known to have, at certain points in time, copied outright and injected into their songs, the works of our very own Andre Marie Talla and Manu Dibango. We are talking here of the greatest Michael Jackson, who was mourned by far more than the likes of the Late President Ronald Reagan.

Yes, when the man who stole Manu Dibango’s talent died, the world media covered him as though he were Christ that had returned to the earth and died again, to kill death definitely. For days, weeks and even months, the world came to a standstill for the one who copied our compatriot’s talent, without acknowledging it.

The case is still very fresh of the Columbian, Shakira, who simply reproduced the music of the legendary Zangalewa Group, and made big fame from it, as it became the theme song for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Her stolen effort topped the charts for a long time.

Billions of music lovers across the world appreciated the stolen art; such art that was nowhere near the original Zangalewa perfectly choreographed clip, skillfully put together by an unusually talented group of Cameroonian soldiers in the first place. While Shakira scored fame and raked in millions of dollars for herself, the Cameroonian originators of the art were apparently going to bed, penniless and dinnerless.

Be that as it may, music, even more than football, has cemented and continues to cement socio-cultural relationships in Cameroon. For, even as certain individuals preach Regional, ethnic, religious and other divisions, music has been known to bridge this and more.

Any wonder therefore, that one man, out of say, ethnic prejudices, could cut down the other and still savour his or her music when he or she has been long buried?