Lapiro de MBANGA and Political Vision in Contemporary Cameroon

Lapiro de Mbanga and Political Vision in Contemporary Cameroon

 

Published by the International Journal of Language Society and Culture under the Penmanship of…ENONGENE  Mirabeau Sone …Ercepts:

 

The popular singer himself sees his primordial role as the liberation of Cameroonians from the tyranny of an "irresponsible and insensitive" government and his songs as powerful metaphors of popular mu-sic which is a hybrid of western instrumentation and local rhythms and lyrics. This music is enjoyed by both higher and lower classes. Its wide reach and particularly its grassroots appeal make it a powerful medium for political activism.The importance of popular music as a powerful and flexible vehicle for political communication explains why the landscape of popular music in Cameroon is vast and is peopled by such popular musicians as Petit Pays, Longe Longe, Ben Decca, Saint Bruno, Lapiro de Mbanga, and Prophet Afo Akom etc.

 

But, for purposes of this paper, I will limit my analysis to one artist, Lambo Pierre Roger Sandjo otherwise  known as Lapiro de Mbanga who to my mind is not only a highly acerbic critic and articulate commentator but also one of the most eloquent, the most prolific and, therefore the most representative of popular musicians in contemporary Cameroon. The acronym Lapiro is an abbreviation of his names: La (Lambo) Pi (Pierre) and Ro (Roger) which he caps off with Mbanga in order to identify with his place of birth. In an interview with The Sun newspaper, Lapiro intimated that he was born in Mbanga in 1957 of mixed parentage:

 

"My mother is from Douala/Aboh. Aboh covers Miang, Mbangsen Bonalea (which is the district headquarters). My father is from Bametcha in Bangoua Sub-Division, Nde Division in the West  Province of Cameroon. Two of them met here in Mbanga and I don`t Know what happened.'

 

In spite of his rich and comfortable background, Lapiro alias Ndingaman drifted into delinquency in his early life. He  made  friends  with  streets  urchins  and  together they  engaged  in  pick pocketing  and  other  petty  crimes.  Like  most  juvenile  delinquents  in  urban setting,  his  misdemeanors landed him in prison.The time he spent behind bars gave him the singular opportunity to experience at first hand the deplorable and precarious living conditions of the wretched of the earth. It is therefore not surprising that when he took to popular music in later life, his major concern was with the plight of the down trodden. His  songs  celebrate the  resilience  while  exposing  the  rapacity  and  voracity  of  authority  figures. Lapiro`s artistic fold rest on two solid foundations.

 

The first is the thematic preoccupation which encompasses such burning issues as national integration, galloping unemployment, abject poverty, ethnocentric marginalisation, economic exploitation and, of course, political chicanery. The second is his medium of expression which is commonly known as "Mboko talk", a strange linguistic concoction o Douala, English, French and Pidgin English spiced with his own coinages and neologisms.

 

The wind of democratic change which swept through the African continent in 1990 ushered into Cameroon a new political era governed by the rule of law. It also helped to shape Lapiro`s musical agenda by creating a favourable socio-political context in which he launched his masterpiece selling album,"Mimba We". Lapiro reached the apogee of his music career in 1992 as one of the principal proponents and spear-heads of the famous "Operation  Ghost  Town".

 

The  turbulence  and  imbroglio  which  characterized  that  political  activism  helped  to propel  Lapiro  into  Cameroon`s  Music  Hal l of  Fame.

 

Then  suddenly  and  inexplicably,  the  virulent  and  vitriolic  voice  of  the fearless  and  intrepid  Lapiro de Mbanga  went  silent. His fans comprising  the deprived  and politically  endangered  could  not  understand what was happening. Had their cynosure ran out of steam or out of inspiration? Had he been bought  over or better still, had he over-stepped the bounds of political decorum and become the unwitting victim of executive censorship? In other words, had he taken too much for  the  owner  to  notice?

 

Whatever the case, it did not take long for his votaries to know that their idol had committed the  monumental  political error of publicly endorsing the regime of President Paul Biya, a regime which to them was made up of predators who encouraged widespread injustice and acquisition of ill-gotten wealth under the veneer of peace and political order. They immediately censored him by boycotting  his  public  performances  and  forcing  him  into  a  precipitous  artistic  limbo  where  he vegetated  for  almost  a decade.

 

He resurfaced on the popular musical scene around 2001 with the same flair and ardour only to discover that he had lost his popular appeal. His "little people" of Nkoululu, Mokolo, and Marche Central  (some  of  the  most  popular  places  for  the  unemployed)  no  longer  believed  in  him.

 

Lapiro   retreated  to  his  hometown  of  Mbanga  where  he  found  refuge  and  time  to chew  the  cud.  About  seventeen years in Musical and  popular  limbo, and  in retrospect, he tries to defend himself:

 

"I am the only one and nobody else, who started pointing and criticizing  the government actions viz-à-viz the population. This gave me the stature of a Politician even though a singer. Everyone knows  what  transpired  in 1990-1992  and the  story  of  Lapiro  and  all  the  talk  that  Biya and  Fochive  (the then director of secret police) gave me money  to  change  my position. Seventeen years later, the truth is here. Do you think that if I was a traitor the people of Mbanga could have made me their chief? I am not a chief because my father was a chief. I am not a chief because Biya and his government decided to make me chief. I am a chief because the people of Mbanga chose me to be their chief".

 

Apart from music, Lapiro de Mbanga has other preoccupations. He is a politician who campaigned for the position of the Mayor of Mbanga on opposition Social Democratic Front(S.D.F) in the municipal elections of 22 July 2007 in Cameroon but he unfortunately lost the position to the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Party (CPDM). As he puts it, the people of Mbanga haveconfidence in him because of what he has done for them: