Makossa
The urban music of Douala that became Cameroon's best-known sound
Period : 1950s-1980s · The Duala and, more broadly, the Sawa peoples of the coast
What is it?
Makossa is an urban music and dance born in Douala in the 1950s. Driven by guitar, a prominent electric bass and brass, it became the popular music of the whole country, then spread across Africa and beyond.
History and origin of the name
The name comes from the Duala word "kossa", a cry used to urge dancers on; the singer Nelle Eyoum is said to have been the first to use it in the 1950s with his band Los Calvinos. The genre draws on Sawa rhythms (ambass-bey, bolobo, essewé) and on Bassa assiko, blended with Ghanaian and Nigerian highlife, Dominican merengue and Congolese rumba. The first recordings came only a decade after it was born.
Rhythm, instruments and dance
- A danceable rhythm with a prominent electric bass, enriched from the late 1960s by funk and then disco, and marked by the guitar playing of Congolese rumba.
- Lead and rhythm guitar, bass, drums, brass and, later, synthesisers; a lead singer backed by a choir, whose female voices owe much to the Protestant church choirs of Douala.
- Sung mainly in Duala and French, it goes with a dance of suggestive hip movements that churchmen long frowned upon.
Key artists
- Nelle Eyoum — the man behind the word makossa, which he launched in the 1950s with his band Los Calvinos; he is regarded as the genre's initiator.
- Eboa Lotin — a pioneer of acoustic makossa, he recorded his first song, "Mulema mam", in 1962 at the Radio Douala studio.
- Manu Dibango — his "Soul Makossa" (1972), the B-side of an anthem for the Africa Cup of Nations, entered the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1973 and took the genre worldwide.
- Ekambi Brillant — his album Africa Oumba (1975) and its song "Elongui", covered by many artists, made him one of the genre's great names.
- Ben Decca — a figure of the 1980s golden age, a member of L'Équipe nationale de makossa alongside Grace Decca, Ndedi Eyango and Dina Bell.
Today
In the 1980s makossa moved to Paris and blended with Caribbean zouk; it declined in the 1990s as new genres arrived, and a fusion with Congolese soukous produced artists such as Petit Pays. Its legacy remains global: the refrain of "Soul Makossa" was reused by Michael Jackson on Thriller (1982) and by Rihanna in 2007. Artists such as Richard Bona and Charlotte Dipanda carry it on today.
What sources disagree on
The exact meaning of the word is debated: some writers translate it as "the contortions" ("m'a kossa"), others as "(I) dance", others again link it to "kósa", "peel!"; Francis Bebey read it as "join the dance". Sources also disagree on Ekambi Brillant's role in the 1960s, whereas his first records date from 1971-1972.