Cameroon

Cameroon is best known for makossa and bikutsi, two styles it produced itself. Makossa came off the Douala coast in the late 1960s and reached the world when Manu Dibango released Soul Makossa in 1972. Bikutsi is the faster Beti dance music of the south, played by electric bands such as Les Têtes Brûlées and later carried by singers like Lady Ponce. Contemporary Cameroonian pop and hip-hop now reach a global audience through artists including Libianca and Stanley Enow.

Makossa is a Douala dance music built on a driving bass line, horn arrangements and singing in the Duala language, which took shape in the late 1960s. Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa carried it to New York clubs in 1972 and it is often cited among the records that pointed toward disco. Through the 1980s it absorbed synthesisers and produced lighter offshoots such as Sam Fan Thomas's makassi, which spread across francophone Africa and the Antilles.

Bikutsi is the dance music of the Beti peoples of southern Cameroon, built on a fast six-beat pulse originally played on balafon. In the 1980s bands such as Les Têtes Brûlées reworked it with distorted electric guitars, shaved heads and body paint, and the documentary Man No Run brought that version to European audiences in 1989. Later artists including Lady Ponce turned bikutsi into a vocalist's music known for blunt lyrics about sex, money and marriage.

Manu Dibango is the most widely recognised, largely on the strength of Soul Makossa, which has been sampled and interpolated for decades. Wes Madiko had the biggest single European chart hit with Alane in 1996, and Richard Bona is the country's most decorated jazz instrumentalist. Among current artists, Libianca reached the highest global chart position any Cameroonian record has managed with People in 2022.

Last reviewed: 2026-09

Cameroon has both French and English as official languages, and artists record in both alongside many local ones. Makossa is typically sung in Duala, bikutsi in Ewondo and other Beti languages, and Mr. Leo records in Lamnso. Rappers frequently move between pidgin, French and English within a single verse, which reflects how Douala and Yaoundé actually sound.