A few days ago, Ngongang Daniel, one of our writers here at Poise, hit us with an interesting article titled “Our Generation is Killing Eboa Lotin’s Heritage”
In the article, he reprimanded the Cameroonian youth for not making any effort to continue the musical legacy some of Cameroon’s musical legends had established in the past. He made mention of the controversial “Makossa don die, il est mort eh” line which Nernos used on his verse on Ngoma’s ‘Mangosi;’ adamantly expressing his disappointment in the fact that people of our generation would even think of celebrating the disappearance of our indigenous music whilst increasingly adopting popular music from other parts of the world.
Daniel asserted that todays musicians may never attain the heights and influence Makossa artists from Cameroon had in Africa from the 60s through to the early 90s; adding that meanwhile he can enjoy music from some of our urban artists of today, he can hardly identify himself with their music. He wrote:-
“It seems our generation is sucked into a vortex where the component that defines our musical DNA is beginning to shed its skin and coalescing with a foreign body. And the result is that we are losing our musical identity….”
Any-Ha!
I agree with Daniel that our musical substance has been watered down and we are currently undergoing what I can term a ‘cultural assimilation.’However, putting the blame on the youth is what doesn’t sit too well with me.
I am glad he rightly mentioned the late 60s to the early 90’s as the time when Cameroon’s music was easily the greatest in Africa. That means if you are under 30 today, you were born into the era when as a nation, we had started to lose our position as a leading, growing or thriving African nation, not only in music but I dare say in almost everything. Whatever we enjoyed of our cultural riches just happened to be remnants of an era that is tragically so far gone. I am sure Daniel grow up in a home where there was some basic cultural education being imparted on him whether intentional or unintentional but most of the youth in Cameroon have been left to rely on pop culture. My dad was not that into music and I have probably only heard him speak passionately about Bob Marley and argue with my mom over who bought the Craig David cassette.
Cameroon has since become a country suffering from a severe import-export deficit and our generation is not to be blamed. I can even extend that to saying anybody under the age of 45 is just a victim. The first generation of Cameroonians that went abroad for studies or other reasons suffered an inferiority complex which till today has made traveling abroad a status symbol in our society. Everything we use to caste our society is imported.
We have grown to attach much more value to imported goods compared to locally made products. It is no rarity to see products being marketed not on their quality but solely on the fact that they have been imported - because we automatically attach more value to something foreign. On a deeper level, we can even see that in our society, foreigners command better treatment than our own brothers and sisters. It is easier for a Lebanese to walk into Cameroon, set up and run a business than it is for a Cameroonian - all because hobnobbing has become part of our identity.
For over 40 years, our own culture has been neglected and substituted for imports. You might know I have myself ventured into doing music. Over my lifetime, I have listened to more American and Nigerian music than I have listened to Cameroonian music. I can count on both fingers how many Cameroonian artists whose work or lives I have detailed knowledge of but if we are talking American artists, I cannot exhaust the list. I know the lyrics, I know their history, I know their personalities etc and it is really not of my doing.
I just happened to have come up in an environment where I was introduced to Sean Paul before Richard Bona, and I could pull up Sean Paul’s lyrics online before I knew I could build a website and upload Kotto Bass lyric videos to YouTube. Nobody cared to make sure I listened to Bikutsi, or Makossa. Nobody cared to make sure I learn about our musical heritage and why it is important to keep it alive. All the images I was fed with as a kid pointed to - Their stuff is so cool, and our stuff is just stuff. I knew Manu Dibango was good but I had more occasions to interact with Nelly.
My dressing has never once been informed by any Cameroonian artists but for some reason, I found myself wearing baggy jeans, and a strip of plaster over my face as a fashion statement. Worse, there was a time when flared trousers (Pantalon trumpet) were reintroduced into the culture and that still did not happen from Cameroon- it was something we imported from Ivory Coast.
You know the most memorable people in Cameroon’s pop culture I can remember?
- Jean Michel Kan Kan - Willy De Paris - Mini Pam Pam
All people who come up under the clown category.
I once wrote an article on Poise titled “By their Heroes we shall know them” in which I explored how the future of a society can only become a product of the stories that are told about the people living today in that society today. If we do not celebrate the pillars of our culture today, we would lose our culture along with their stories. When we pay local artists less than we pay foreign artists, we are sending a message that the foreigners product has more value so our artists need to have that kid of product to be considered for better pay. There is no reward for promoting our culture. I even dare to say there is something to lose in attempting to do that.
We are now getting married in Nigerian traditional regalia.
We are now trying to construct glass buildings and model our cities around New York, doing a poor job at it too.
We have very few occasions in a year where our culture is celebrated. Throughout the year, we spend our time watching foreign movies and listening to foreign music. Even our national Television pays for foreign shows more than it pays for locally produced content.
We see a cold war against educative content online. People would rather spend their entire time consuming meme jokes, gossip, and what not instead of reading things that can feed their minds and imagination. Everyday, with our attention, we are voting whether our kids will grow up wanting to be Kinnaka or Poise.
Let’s not act surprised when what we vote for wins.
To make things worst, we are all coming up under a generation that wanted exclusivity to the greatness. A generation of fathers who don’t believe their own children can or should be greater than them. So instead of investing in the younger generations, they deprive them of everything they need to grow and move the culture.
Where are our libraries and museums?
What foundations are left for us to build on?