Music of Cameroon
In the semi-arid northern regions (the Sahel) and central highlands the Fulani (French: Peul or Peuhl; Fula: Fulɓe) form an estimated 14% of Cameroonians, while the Kirdi (unbelievers) are a general category, comprising 18% of the population, of various mainly Chadic and Adamawa speakers.
Messi Martin was a Cameroonian guitarist who had been inspired to learn the instrument by listening to Spanish language-broadcasts from neighboring Equatorial Guinea, as well as Cuban, and Zairean rumba.
Messi changed the electric guitar by linking the strings together with pieces of paper, thus giving the instrument a damper tone which emitted a "thudding" sound similar to the balafon.
Messi's style was immediately popular, and his hits, like "Mengalla Maurice" and "Bekono Nga N'Konda," became radio favorites throughout the country beginning in the early 1960s.
By the 1970s, bikutsi performers like Maurice Elanga, Les Veterans, and Mbarga Soukous, added brass instruments and found controversy over pornographic lyrics.
Makossa in the 1980s saw a wave of mainstream success across Africa and, to a lesser degree, abroad as Latin influences, Martinican zouk, and pop music changed its form.
Les Veterans emerged as the most famous bikutsi group in the 1980s while other prominent performers included Titans de Sangmelima, Seba Georges, Ange Ebogo Emerent, Otheo and Mekongo President, who added complex harmonies and jazz influences.
In 1984, a new wave of bikutsi artists emerged, including Sala Bekono formerly of Los Camaroes, Atebass, a bassist, and Zanzibar, a guitarist who would eventually help form Les Têtes Brulées with Jean-Marie Ahanda.
Jean-Marie Ahanda became the most influential bikutsi performer of the late 1980s, and he revolutionized the genre in 1987 after forming Les Têtes Brulées, whose success changed the Cameroonian music industry.
Guitarist Zanzibar added foam rubber to the bridge of his guitar, which made the instrument sound more like a balafon than before, and was more aggressive and innovative than previous musicians.
The band's image was part of its success, and they became known for their shaved heads and multi-colored body painting, done to represent traditional Beti scarification, as well as torn T-shirts that implied a common folkness in contrast to the well-styled pop-makossa performers of the period.
These included Congolese-influenced new rumba and makossa-soukous, as well as more native forms like bantowbol, northern Cameroonian nganja (which had gained some popularity in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s), and an urban street music called bend-skin.
Les Têtes Brulées remained the country's most well known musical export, especially after accompanying the Cameroonian soccer team to the World Cup in 1990 in Italy and 1994 in the United States.
Vincent Nguini also contributed guitar arrangements and performance to Simon's Rhythm of the Saints, which became an influential world music album, introducing many North American listeners to the wide range of instrumentation and genres.
Youthful artists like Gibraltar Drakuss, Zele le Bombardier, Eboue Chaleur, Pasto, Roger Bekono, Mbarga Soukous, and Saint-Desiré Atango was a return to the aggressive, earthy sound of bikutsi roots.
The most recent form of Cameroonian popular music is a fusion of Congolese soukous and makossa, a scene which has produced Petit Pays, Marcel Bwanga, Kotto Bass, Papillon and Jean Pierre Essome.
