Les Têtes Brûlées

About Les Têtes Brûlées

Les Têtes Brûlées took bikutsi, the fast Beti dance music of southern Cameroon, and played it with distorted guitars, shaved heads and body paint. The band formed in Yaoundé around Jean-Marie Ahanda and the guitarist Zanzibar, and the 1989 documentary Man No Run followed them on a French tour. Essingan is the recording most associated with that moment. They made bikutsi legible as a rock music to audiences who had never heard it.