How maiden South West Cultural Festival pushed budding artist to limelight.

Thaba Joseph

A budding Cameroonian artist named Thaba Joseph has recounted that the maiden South West Cultural Festival that took place in Kumba gave him the first opportunity to entertain a huge crowd of people from all over the country and beyond. For him, this was an opportunity which he made good use of thanks to the encouragement of the South West Delegation of the Ministry of Arts and Culture geaded by Grace Ewang.

Presently this young artist’s activities are closely watched by the Regional Delegate of Arts and Culture for the South West Region Madame Grace Ewang. According to the young artist they are under the present dispensation coming up with a group called Akafame with Prince Ndedi Eyango as President. The upstart who is also Financial Secretary of South West based artists said “artist like me and many other rising ones like me need people to come to our help so that we can work together to bring out the talent that God has placed in many like us.”

The budding artist who is from Menkah Sub Division began his music through inspiration from songs by other people. He therefore began by singing other people’s music and from there got the inspiration to start doing his own stuff. The first steps saw him joining the Brasseries Song Competition far back in 1990.

On how his culture helped him to get started in music he said “culturally, the Menka clan is very rich and I have been participating in almost all cultural festivals. I have greatly sourced from the sounds, the dances and the exotic musical instruments.”

“My first experience was the M1 studio in Buea where I made my first record which received popular acclaim in these parts of the country. My first album Ebumu which means “come together” came out five years ago.  After a couple of years I came up with another album Nchibiwando which means the traditional dance of the Wando man.”

Culture in Cameroon he said needs promotion and the difficulties of the promotion of culture in our country is due to the fact that the framework is not shaped with the promotion of culture in view. Despite the existence of a ministry and delegations, much still has to be added to this skeletal structure.    

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