Lessons from Dynastie's Joue moi le Menjang

Joue moi le Menjang, a hit track of Dynasties Le Tigre 2015 album, La Loi de la Nature, is a commendable piece of art steaming with lessons for the curious. The lyrics, the rhythm, and the video maintain a rich mélange of cultural flavours that carry a salient message. The video depicts a journey that commences from a mesh of identity crisis and self-conflict and which then evolves into self-realisation; a realisation which eventually materialises to self-identification and acceptance. The beats are on a par with the video and its message and equally transition in three phases.

The video is laid out on the canvas of a typical Cameroonian village. Dynastie encounters a young boy, on a corridor-like farm road, who reminds him of his childhood dreams and longing for a foreign land and culture. The palm wine (matango) Dynatie pours for the kid is a kind of initiation meant to keep the young man from straying from his origins like Dynastie did. Previously, Dynastie looked up to foreign role models like Michael Jackson and R. Kelly. He longed to drink champagne, play billiards, savour caviar, speak English and dance to the rhythms of jazz, R&B and blues. In due course, he awes viewers with a beautiful juxtaposition of two cultures as he fights the ingrained notion of a cultural inferiority.

This first phase of the video is complemented by a delightful banquet of beats. The start of the song consists of a collection of 4 sounds that are rolling at the same time. The deepest, relatively speaking, is a drum that is accompanied by a gong-like instrument and two other instruments that seem to be variations of shakers. These sounds all ease into a beautiful stream of xylophone music and drums that emerge about the high 8th and 9th second of the music.  Right up to the second minute, the melodies are fairly soothing with varying shades of increasing intensity. The surging intensity suggests that a melodic explosion is coming ahead. It is like a pot of soup that steadily progresses towards boiling point whence it begins to boil vigorously. There is a signal that the sounds ahead are going to transition into another mood, although the transition actually happens a couple of seconds later.

This new and second phase which surfaces at the 124th second is actually a torrent of beats in the spirits of merengue.  The beats of this song, by this time, form a wide collection of different instruments and themes arising from different parts of the world; an emergence in which the xylophone serves as the nucleus. There is a mix of blues, merengue, traditional xylophone themes, and drum-like themes. The various gongs enforce each of these themes seamlessly and harmoniously. All these reflect the diverse cultural influences that he is exposed to. The dominance of the xylophone which serves as the nucleus of the sound, shows that his local influences or his roots should be the most essential component of his identity.

Then, the recognition and self-identification phase sets in at this point. If the listener upon listening to this song was being teleported very slowly to some orgasmic state of mind, then the first realisation of this state is at the 2:11 time mark. This marks the start of a relatively more euphoric phase; the dawn of new consciousness that is embodied in an explosion of melodies. Dynastie begins to recognise and give value to his own cultural realities values and symbols. His longing for foreignness had kept him blind to the rich heritage around him; he has matango (palm wine) to quench his thirst with, can always play songho with his pals, eat bobolo with many an accompaniment and dance to the various rhythms of his native land ( bikutsi, asiko, mangbe etc).

The dawning of this new consciousness is a call for dance and merriment. Here the director gets a thumbs up for highlighting the unifying, entertaining and educational strength of music in our African communities as the music draws the villagers to what looks like a village arena. They all sing and gyrate to the beats of the menjang (xylophone). He celebrates his own heroes in humility and respect and a touch of humour: Samuel Etoo, Nelson Mandela, Thomas Sankara, Roger Milla, Charles Ateba Eyene, Lady Ponce and Manu Dibango.

A final phase materialises and again we experience a beautiful marriage of theme, mood and beats. We take respite from the recent phenomenon of "empty lyrics" as Dynastie calls on his fellow people to make a paradise of their homeland rather than seek foreign lands. There is a call on Africa and Cameroon to stand up with pride. Now that he has found himself, his restless spirit finds peace which we can sense in the guitar flow. A guitar sound is introduced that flattens as it fades away. The guitar persists at the background and it gets flatter while pulling the rest of the melodies and making them flatter. The flattening happens in an evasive manner until it becomes most evident from the 4:39 time mark, and it leads to the playful end of the song.

All in all, the song, Jour moi le Mendjang, provides a rich tapestry of melodies from a wide variety of musical themes and genres. The more novel pieces of the beats are the drums and xylophones which give it a more traditional or home-based flavour. The trick of the producer in adding melodies to the mix at odd fractions of a given second is very playful and artistic. The instrumental layer of this song is dense and rich, enveloping blues, merengue, march past themes, traditional themes from the North West, South West, Littoral and Central regions, just to name a few. It is a demonstration, in some sense, of the tip of richness of melodies that are harboured in the various tribes and cultures of Cameroon. It is also a boost of assurance that we have young visionary artist who have the zest to not only entertain but also to conscientise and sell their culture. He might be a young artist but there is a lot to be learnt from this son of the South.

Geraldine Njang M. and B. Mesoko