Traditional Music of Cameroon

The Cameroon is a home to many different ethnic groups, the Beti, or Ewondo are among the main numerous and live ethnic groups of the country in the area all over Yaounde and south Equatorial Guinea. The Beti are well-known for bikutsi music which has been famous and become a rival for the more urban and accessible makossa of Douala. The Bikutsi is considered by an intense 6/8 rhythm and it is played at all type of Beti gatherings, which include parties, funerals, and weddings. The word bikutsi can be referred to as beating the ground continuously. The Beti gathering fall into two main classes

·         Ekang phase is the time when imaginary, mythological and spiritual issues are discussed.

·         Bikutsi phase is time when the real life issue are discussed.

source of picture: aroundtheworldin52weeks.blogspot.com

The double sided harp with calabash amplification is known as mvet and is used during these ceremonies, by the Beti storytellers who are viewed as using the mvet as a musical instrument of God to teach the people. The Ekang phase is intensely musical and usually lasts all the night. There are poetic reading accompanied by clapping and dancing with breaking for improvise and sometime obscene performances on the balafon (a kind of xylophone).  Its breakings signal the shift to the bikutsi phase which is less strictly structured than Ekang. Though bikutsi, women dance and sing along with the balafon, the lyrics focus on real life issues as well as sexual fantasies, these female choruses are an integral part of bikutsi and their strong dancing and screams are considered of the genre. Other kind of ceremony is the mevungu, it is a women dance that the women dance at night to abstain from sex during those hours for a period of nine days. The sso ritual is much feared by Beti boy as this involves different tests to mark a boy’s passage into manhood.