The National Orchestra That Never Was
The writer recounts being named to a government jury tasked with auditioning musicians for Cameroon's proposed national orchestra, only to watch the selection process collapse under ethnic quotas, unsuitable material, and administrative manipulation. The authorities used the jury's presence for legitimacy while ignoring its actual judgments, leaving talent unheard and ambition stillborn.
"Cameroon wanted a national orchestra. Three of us were named by the government to audition candidates. They came from north to south; even traditional musicians came. The authorities did not ask for our opinion. Their only concern was a certain balance between the different ethnic groups: each was to be represented within this embryo of a band. This became a melodrama in which music took a back seat.
We had no say about the subject of the audition material; a famous man overseeing things had selected 'Laura', an American tune even the most illustrious jazz musicians had a hard time playing. How to play 'Laura' on tam-tam or balafon? In the audition hall, the candidates started by listening to a version of 'Laura' on the record player.
At the first chord, their faces would twist. They really had to perform now. Some didn't even try. "Sir, I don't know that piece. I can't play." They wish they had stayed in their villages. How could we grade them under these conditions?
We gave our evaluations, but the authorities took over our grading system and designated their own candidates. Using our presence on the jury, they bragged on the radio about having set up a professional selection process.
What was it - willful vice, incompetence, or lack of awareness? Twenty [forty] years later, Cameroon is overflowing with musical potential but still doesn't have a national orchestra worthy of the name."
Manu Dibango - Three Kilos of Coffee (1989)
This piece reflects a moment—the late 1980s—when Cameroon was attempting to formalize and centralize its cultural institutions, a common aspiration across post-independence Africa. The friction between meritocratic musical standards and state demands for ethnic representation exposes a persistent tension in governance: the gap between the stated purpose of a body and its actual function.
It diagnoses a quiet but consequential failure of institutional culture: the use of credible people (musicians, experts) as window-dressing for predetermined decisions. The piece matters now because it names something many recognize but few articulate—that legitimacy borrowed from real expertise, then disregarded, corrupts both. The absence of a worthy national orchestra two decades later is not accidental; it is the logical endpoint of a process where music itself was never the point.