I love Bikutsi. I love Bikutsi for the same reason that I love Makossa from the 60s and 70s - the bass guitar. There is something magical about that instrument and when someone who knows how to play it well does so, you can feel the magic in it. In Bikutsi, my untrained music ear makes me feel it dictates the music. Bikutsi is an upbeat music, very vibrant and also very higher-tempo. And the way the bass follows that frenetic rhythm makes me squirm.
Bikutsi has always been in my life. There was always one Bikutsi hit song or another that was reigning at any time. But I fell in love with Bikutsi in 2011. I got my first iPod that year and someone uploaded K-Tino’s music onto it.
I was nearing my mid-20s, was very sexually active and the sheer brazenness of K-Tino’s lyrics caught me unaware. Before that, I had heard people complain about the explicit lyrics of Bikutsi music in general, and those of K-Tino in particular.
I mean… I was no fool. I knew of the little sexual innuendoes that Bikutsi musicians slid into their songs from time to time. My mother was angry when she caught me humming to “Ton calecon fait quoi chez moi” from a passing advertisement car outside our house. Even Petit Pays’ “tues-moi ce soir” and “Sister, chop ma mop” are all songs heavy in sexual, lyrical symbolism.
But K-Tino’s lyrics were on another level. Take the lyrics for “Septieme Ciel,” for example Je te jure mon ami ne me fait pas du mal/ Retirez, remettez, ça me donne de l’envie/ Ça me donne des frissons, parfois même chaire de coq/ Tout en balançant mes deux jambes en l’air/ Le musclé de mon ami ça me donne de la joie/ Sans hésitation ca m’envoie au ciel/ On m’appelle par moment, la malle arrière/ Sans commentaire j’ai derrière bien cabré. Arrêtes mon bébé, ne me fait pas du mal/ Positionne ton bijou, sans étouffer. Correctement, et bien dosé.
And it goes on and on. I remember my fascination and my very loud laughter in a bus, travelling to Bamenda when I listened to those lyrics, and those of the other ten or so K-Tino songs that were on that iPod. I’m not sure why it fascinated me so much. As a fan of rap music, I had heard some very dirty stuff in music before. But was it that it was Cameroonian? Was it the boldness of it? Was it that the instruments and their frenetic tempo got my feet thumping? Was it that I was going through a highly sexually active phase and the lyrics spoke directly to me? I really cannot tell. All I know is that I loved every bit of it.
But I imagined how disappointed my poor mother would be at that very moment if she heard me listening to all that dirty and perverse garbage, as she would have called it. I imagined all her sisters, my aunties, also frowning at me.
I imagined the larger part of society in general just shaking their head and raising their fist in disgust. We live in a society that I would say is quite tolerant of sexual perversion – so long as it is heterosexual of course. I have in been in public places; bars, restaurants, hospitals and I have heard men and women discuss openly about sex and sexuality in the most explicit and filthy manner possible.
I am no fan of filthy talk. I don’t engage in it and I don’t like hearing it; especially in public spaces. There is something terribly obscene about people (men in particular) openly discussing their sexual experiences in public places. My dislike for filthy talk cost me a relationship when a girl I was in an entanglement with, asked me to talk dirty to her during sex. I tried and burst out laughing in the middle of the act, at the sheer stupidity of it. She, on the other hand was not amused. I received a text later from her telling me she was moving on due to our sexual incompatibility.
But come back to the issue, we see that while society seems to tolerate such talk coming from men, it would shush women instead. No doubt that about that since we live in a patriarchal society and women are expected to be the more virtuous beings.
Bikutsi music, in general, is rife with sexual innuendoes, and musicians of both sexes take part it in it gleefully. But as always, it is the women who bear the greater burden of society’s brunt with the issue. They give the women the usual tags that come in such situations; witches, prostitutes, perversion vendors… and what have you.
But if we look at the other side of the glass, one starts to ask if that is all there really is to it. They sing songs about sex and these songs are filthy. But is that it?
K-Tino’s lyrics, when you listen closely, is about sexual freedom. It’s about a woman who is in control of her sexuality. It’s about a women who does not dominate her sexual partner but is capable of telling them outright “that tonight I am charge, and I am taking control. I want you to grab me like this, and take me like this and hit me from this or that angle.”
It is about sexual freedom expressed ‘sans retenue’. It is an expression of sexual desire that exposes what goes on in out bedroom, and which we are too ashamed to talk about sometimes.
We live in a society where women are afraid to tell their partners that they have not attained orgasm and where they have to fake it in order to stroke their partners’ egos in the right direction. We live in society where many men cannot point out a clitoris on a diagram even if hit them in the face, and where many tell you they never do foreplay or engage in cunnilingus because that is for mad men.
We have freedom of sexual expression, but many, particularly the women, are caged in their expression and are scared to express it.
Perhaps it helps K-Tino that she comes from a society where the expression of sexual desire and gratification is as common as ‘bonjour.’ I am playing into the prejudice of the Fang-Bulu-Beti people being more sexually free in the expression of such desires. If you are of this clan, please do not be offended. I have not done any anthropological studies to come to such conclusions. But in a way, if you look it at, it is warranted that this is expected of her. After all, “ces sont les gens là. Ils aiment d’abord trop ca. » Will such be tolerated from Grace Decca ? I highly doubt so
I am reminded of a Bulu girl I met in a bus travelling to Douala. We exchanged numbers and made out in the bus. (Yea…I know. I am trash.) We arranged to meet a week later in Yaounde and in that time, she sent me all manner of suggestive text messages one which pointedly said “tu sais que nous les filles du sud, on aime ca, et on connait faire ca. Donc, laisses, mon bebe. Je vais te faire ca dure.”
It turned out to be the worst sexual experiences of my life and I deleted her number the very next morning.
That being said, I had a near-similar experience with an Oku girl who boasted in the same manner and left me shaking my head at the complete waste of my time. I never called her back and I have since been always worried when I hear the sound of thunder.
But to conclude, K-Tino’s songs should not perhaps be seen at face value. Yes, it is not suitable for children but one cannot wipe away, with the slide of the hand, the lessons that could be drawn by society, on the issues that it evokes, if one were to look more closely.
-Wandji Wilfred.