Culture of Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Source: kamerkonnection.com

Obscenity the key to success in Cameroon’s urban music?

Cameroon music Cameroon music

At this point in time, we have all digested the vulgar and sexually explicit contents of Cameroon Urban music, but the fact remains, obscenity hidden in satiric composition and context is ravaging the social mentality of Cameroonian’s.

Could this be attributed to the liberalization and freedom of expression? A scope with much doubt or to the Political Economy of Communication, where we communicate to sell and to sell at all cost, subduing the choice of the final consumer, the day to day man on the streets?.

In a stringent lutte for fame and success, morality has been relegated for obscenity thus indoctrinating the mass to a new phenomenon referred to as “Trappe” in the urban musical parlance, to mean “Talking or singing the way you like”.

In the race to fame, statistic have shown that the most successful Cameroonian tubes be it now or back in the days have mostly been LOVE oriented or SEX driven but considering the context of time and development, the mode of expression are different.

In the yesteryears SEX was highly a taboo to be preached with such explicitly as the case today because artists spent time and energy composing and producing good songs full of melody and rhyme reasons why people danced to songs they understood nothing but enjoyed the rhyme, melody, and tempo.

Today with the advent of new information technology and the world a global village, the see and do syndrome has infiltrated into cultures with Cameroon, not an exception. In today's Urban music, it is very common to find artiste using sex and to an extend demonstrating the act in their music and videos.