NexDim Star of the Week: GOLDEN SOUNDS ‘ZANGALEWA”

Golden Sounds or ZANGALEWA is a Cameroonian Makossa group. It was led by a career member of Cameroon’s presidential guard, Jean Paul Zé Bella. The men in the group provided comical musical entertainment, often dressing in military uniforms, wearing pith helmets and stuffing their clothes with pillows to appear like they had swollen bottoms from riding the train and fat stomachs from eating too much. The band is most famous for its song, Zangalewa which was a huge hit in Africa since its release in 1986. The song was also popular in Colombia where it was known as “The Military” and brought to the country by West African DJs. The song made their band so popular that they later changed the name of their group to Zangalewa, which means “Where are you from?”.

Shakira‘s collaboration with FreshlyGround for the 2010 World Cup, produced the song “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)” . She shamelessly declared in a press conference that the song was composed by her.

Jean Paul ze Bella has since retired from the presidential guard in 2002 after 30 years of service but his song stands as an icon of Cameroonian military history.

The song is still used today almost everywhere in Africa by soldiers, policemen, boy scouts, sportsmen, and their supporters, usually during training or for rallying. It is also widely used in schools throughout the continent especially in Cameroon as a marching song and almost everyone in the country knows the chorus of the song by heart.

The song, music historians say, is a criticism of black military officers who were in league with whites to oppress their own people.The rest is Cameroonian slang and jargon from the soldiers during the war

According to Jean Paul Zé Bella, the lead singer of Golden Sounds, the chorus came from Cameroonian “sharpshooters who had created a slang for better communication between them during the Second World War”. They copied this fast pace in the first arrangements of the song. They sang the song together for freedom in Africa.

The lyrics, which are in a Central African language called Fang, read like this:

Tsa mina mina eh eh

Waka waka eh eh

Tsa mina mina zangalewa

Ana wam ah ah

Zambo eh eh

Zambo eh eh

Tsa mina mina zangalewa

Wana wa ah ah

Many other artists around the world have previously sampled this song as well. Some of the artists who have sampled the song are:

• Las Chicas Del Can, their version is called “El negro no puede”.
• The Surinamese group Beatmachine. Their version is called “Samina Mina”.
• Adane Best
• The movie The Lion King also feature samples of this song.^{[citation needed]}
• Los Condes
• Vic Nees
• Bestmachine (Suriname) Samina mina
• Tom Pease in Daddy Starts To Dance! (1996)
• Trafassi (Suriname), El Negro No Puede (Waka Waka) (1997) ^[4]
• Blacks à braque and the Tambours majeurs from the album Les Hauts de Rouen percutent…
• Cape Town Waka Waka ^{[5] [6] [7]}
• Laughing Pizza in Pizza Party (2004)
• Nakk in Zamina (2006)
• Zaman in Zamina (2006) ^[8]
• Didier Awadi (“Zamouna”) from the album Sunugaal (2008)
• BB DJ, Enfant Poli
• Shakira, Waka Waka, esto es Africa (World Cup 2010)
• Mr. Tucker, Zamina Zamina Pele
• Trafassi, their version is called “El negro no puede” and it’s in the album “Tropicana (disc 1)”
• Massamba Diouf.

Some Research Excerpts from Wikipedia.org