The tradition & historical record
2 min read · 1 sourceAmbasse bey or ambas-i-bay is a style of folk music and dance from Cameroon. The music is based on commonly available instruments, especially guitar, with percussion provided by sticks and bottles. The music is faster-paced than assiko. John Hall described its rhythm as the one of a moving broom. Where dancers swing their shoulders like the wings of birds, the dance is composed of sequences of fluid steps and jerky body movements performed in accordance with the music, which is generally the makossa. In order to perform this dance, the dancers must wear traditional sawa outfits. Ambasse bey originated among the Yabassi ethnic group and grew popular in Douala after World War II. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the style evolved in the Cameroonian Littoral. In the mid-1960s, Eboa Lotin performed a style of ambasse bey on harmonica and guitar that was the earliest form of makossa, a style that quickly came to overshadow its predecessor and become Cameroon's most popular form of indigenous music. Ambasse bey was revived to an extent by Cameroonian singer Sallé John. "Given the cultural diversity that Sallè John's country boasts, every Cameroonian citizen must be proud and jealous of the enormous cultural and artistic potential that our dear and beautiful country abounds in. In terms of performing arts, pride is even more enticing with heritage dances in unique styles.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Ambasse bey”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
ambasse bey is style of folk music and dance from Cameroon, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 1