Ambasse bey

Music of Cameroon
Bamileke drummers
Genres
Makossa Bikutsi Mvet Assiko Nganja Bend-skin New rumba Bantowbol Ambasse bey Bend-skin
Specific forms
Tsamassi Mangambeu
Regional music
Music of Africa

Ambasse bey or ambas-i-bay is a style of folk music and dance from Cameroon. The music is based on commonly available instruments, especially guitar, with percussion provided by sticks and bottles.^[1] The music is faster-paced than assiko, an older form of Cameroonian popular folk music.^[2]

Ambasse bey originated among the Yabassi ethnic group^[3] and grew popular in Douala after World War II. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the style evolved in the Cameroonian Littoral. In the mid-1960s, Eboa Lotin performed a style of ambasse bey on harmonica and guitar that was the earliest form of makossa, a style that quickly came to overshadow its predecessor and become Cameroon's most popular form of indigenous music.^[4] Ambasse bey was revived to an extent by Cameroonian singer Sallé John.^[5]

Notes

1. Mbaku 197.
2. Hudgens and Trillo 1183.
3. Guide touristique 131.
4. Mbaku 197–8.
5. DeLancey and DeLancey 184.

References

• Chrispin, Pettang, directeur, Cameroun: Guide touristique. Paris: Les Éditions Wala.
• DeLancey, Mark W., and Mark Dike DeLancey (2000): Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon (3rd ed.). Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.
• Hudgens, Jim, and Richard Trillo (1999). West Africa: The Rough Guide. 3rd ed. London: Rough Guides Ltd.
• Mbaku, John Mukum (2005). Culture and Customs of Cameroon. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.