Kazam Laflamme - Kumbaya

Topic: Hip Hop
On the west coast of Central Africa, Dennis Rathnaw said electric bands in night clubs in 2006 would start the evening

"with a set of jazz and American pop and soul standards. That was followed invariably by a set of makossa classics, and the night stretched into morning with bikutsi after bikutsi." [1]

For the young, hip hop was

"the defacto soundtrack of Africa in this decade. Even African pop styles such as hiplife in Ghana and coupé décalé in Côte d’Ivoire are incorporating its elements and visual style." [2]

Kazam Laflamme’s 2017 version of "Kumbaya" was a synthesis of all the musical styles he heard in Cameroon’s port city of Douala.

Makossa was the popular music form that developed in Douala and Paris [3] during the years after French independence when the president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, was emphasizing national unification over tribalism. [4] It was supplanted by bikutsi when Paul Biya became president in 1982. [5] He was from the Beti ethnic group that lived in the area of Yaoundé, the capital city. [6]

Bikutsi had a pronounced 6/8 rhythm within a 4/4 structure. [7] Kazam’s percussionists used a deep-toned, hand-played drum on the first beat and a smaller hand-drum on the second and third, with the third more dominant than the second. Following this waltz pattern, a dull thud sounded on the fourth beat.

The dance music evolved from traditional Beti forms that alternated recitations accompanied by harp-like mvets with dances backed by singing and marimba-like balafons. Messi Me Nkonda Martin substituted a guitar for the balafon, [8] then in the 1970s Maurice Elanga added brass and Knondo Si Tony used a synthesizer. [9] They all maintained the "thud" sound that came from the balafon. [10]

Kazam rapped his verses with a strongly punctuated, guttural voice. This "accelerated, savage, and brutal" style had entered bikutsi in 1993 at the Carrosel Club during a prolonged economic depression. [11]

A group sang the chorus that included the word "kumbaya." Kazam and his vocalists probably used Franglais, a pidgin that developed after the former French and English colonies were united in 1961. One of the first musicians to use it in a performance in the 1980s was Lapiro de Mbanga. [12] Kazam occasionally used recognizable English words like "everybody."

What was clear was the use of alliteration and syllabic repetition, especially of open syllables like "la la la," "yah yah yah," and "what I say, what I say, what I say." This chant style probably was borrowed from makossa. Emmanuel Nelle Eyoum repeated "kossa kossa" in the 1950s, [13] and Manu Dibango used "ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa" in 1973. [14] He noted people at the time thought his ablaut reduplicative treatment of "makossa" was an imitation of stuttering that debased the music. [15]

The iterative motif was carried over to Kazam’s instrumental ending when, instead of the group singing the "kumbaya" chorus, a thumb piano [16] repeated the four-note drum phrase over and over. At the very end, it was joined by the drums and synthesizer.

Under Biya’s regime, two bikutsi subtypes developed: one political and one erotic. [17] Judging from Kazam’s moniker "the flame," his text may have fallen into latter. Just before the final instrumental interlude a deeper voice used the words "dance so dirty."

However, the name of the record compilation, OneTribuland, suggested the man who recorded Kazam may have had a more political vision. Cameroon was a long country that transversed five ecological zones and 250 linguistic groups. [18] Both bikutsi and Franglais were ways average citizens were unifying themselves that were subversive of the government’s efforts to impose a single bilingual culture

Performers
Vocal Soloist: Kazam Laflamme
Vocal Group: not identified
Instrumental Soloist: thumb piano
Instrumental Accompaniment: synthesizer, brass, electric bass
Rhythm Accompaniment: drums, shaker

Credits
© Patrick Jerry Cheukuo [19]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: mixture
Pronunciation: kum by YAH

Basic Form: verse-chorus
Literary Devices: alliteration, assonance, syllabic repetition
Ending: none

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: own
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: AB-AB-AB-CBC where C was an instrumental

Singing Style: verses (A) were chanted; chorus (B) was sung with several notes assigned to occasional syllables. The recording began and ended with distorted voices like bikutsi screams.

Notes on Performance
The song appeared on a compilation put together by OneTribuland Recordz of Douala. [20] The company may have provided the backup singers and musicians.

The album cover design of a circle partially outlined and bisected by bands filled with dots borrowed from the face painting patterns used by a bikutsi group, Les Têtes Brulées. Option Magazine said the motifs came from "traditional Beti ceremonies." [21]

Notes on Performers
Kazam told his Facebook followers he earned an accounting degree in 2014 in Douala. He also wrote his hometown was in a cattle-raising region of Brazil [22] and he since had moved to Paris. He described himself as a singer and rapper. [23]

Nothing more was available on Kazam or the others involved with his recording. Rathnaw and others have commented on the effects of the pervasive corruption in Cameroon where money allocated for any infrastructure project simply disappears and recordings are pirated and royalties non-existent. [24]

Availability
MP3: OneTribuland Compil. 16 June 2017.

End Notes
1. Dennis Michael Rathnaw. "Waiting for Gumbo: Cargo Cults, Media and the Bikutsi of Cameroon." PhD diss. The University of Texas at Austin. December 2009. 144-145.

2. Rathnaw. 77.
3. Wikipedia. "Makossa."

4. Glenn Fowler. "Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon Dies; Ex-Leader Was 65." The New York Times. 2 December 1989. Ahidjo was a Muslim Fulani from the northern part of the country.

5. Jean-Victor Nkolo and Graeme Ewens. "Cameroon." 440-447 in World Music: Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Edited by Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, and Richard Trillo. London: The Rough Guides, 1999. 442.

6. Amber Murrey. "Thoughts on 30 Years of Biya Power in Cameroon." Pambazuka website. 8 November 2012. Biya was from the Bulu subgroup of the Beti. One clan of Beti spoke Ewondo, a Bantu language.

7. Mick Berry and Jason Gianni. The Drummer’s Bible. Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2012 edition. 4.

8. Jean-Marie Ahanda. Interview, 3 April 1996. Cited by Hortense Fuller and Charles Fuller. "A History of Bikutsi Music in Cameroon." African Sounds website.

9. Nkolo. 443.
10. Fuller.
11. Fuller. Quotation on pedalé form from singer Bisso’ Solo. Interview, 23 April 1996.
12. "Lapiro de Mbanga: Protest, Power and Politics." Bakwa Magazine website. 1 June 2014.
13. Wikipedia, Makossa.

14. "Soul Makossa." Soul Makossa. Fiesta 360.047. France. 1972. Michael Jackson quoted the chant on "Wanna Be Startin’ Something." Thriller. Epic QE38112. 30 November 1982. (Discogs entries for albums).

15. Mano Dibango and Danielle Rouard. Three Kilos of Coffee. Translated by Beth G. Raps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Quoted by Ben Zimmer. "Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa." Language Log website. 26 June 2009.

16. The thumb piano was discussed in the post for 18 October 2017.

17. Bikutsis traditionally were sung by women with lyrics that described their problems and dreams, much like the lullabies mentioned in the posts for 19 January 2018.

18. Wikipedia. "Cameroon."
19. The Mp3 file downloaded from Amazon said Vidal Domo was the composer.

20. Notes for Scoopie Ft Edmondo Titre. "Every Day I Try My Best." Uploaded to YouTube by Scoopie 237 on 21 July 2017.

21. Citation and quotation from Fuller. Ahanda organized Les Têtes Brulées in 1987.

22. Kazam said his hometown was "Congo, Paraiba, Brazil." The first land claim was made in 1830 for a ranch. (Portuguese Wikipedia. "Congo (Paraíba).")

23. "About Kazam Laflamme Laglass." Facebook. He wrote "je suis chanteur puis je rappeur."

24. Rathnaw. The title of his dissertation, gumbo, referred to the local term for tips, bribes, kickbacks, and other payments that fueled the economy.