The tradition & historical record
2 min read · 1 sourceMakossa is a music genre originating in Douala, Littoral Region, Cameroon in the late 20th century. Like much other music of Sub-Saharan Africa, it uses strong electric bass rhythms and prominent brass. Makossa uses guitar accompaniments, in the forms of solo and rhythm guitar, with a main singer (lead vocalist) and a choir of backup singers, with the focus being on the texture of the guitar, the role it plays in the song, the relationship between it and other instruments (including the bass, drum set, horns, synthesizers, etc.), the lyrical content and languages sung as well as their relationship (as far as timbre goes) with the music, the uses of various percussion instruments, including the bottle, the groove of the bass as well as the drums, and the use of technical knowledge and microprocessors to make the music. It is in common time (4/4) for the vast majority of cases. Language-wise, it is typically sung in French, Duala or Pidgin English. Tempo-wise, it is typically in between 130 and 170 BPM. It traditionally consisted of guitar-picking techniques that borrows from bikutsi; with a guitar-structure of a guitar switching from solo to rhythm from assiko; supplanted with complex bass grooves, and gradually picked up on brass section, from funk and later in the 70s, string section, from disco. It along with this acquired the sebene from Congolese rumba. In the 1980s makossa had a wave of mainstream success across Africa and to a lesser extent abroad.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Makossa”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
makossa is type of dance and music genre from Duala, 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 9 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 1