L’homme de chèvre – Tokoto Ashanty, 1979

🇨🇲 🎸 🎭 🐐 🎶 As much a dancer as a singer, Tokoto Ashanty had no equal when it came to winning over an audience. Expelled from the missionaries’ college as a teenager, it was indeed as a musician that he would make his name. He played the clubs of Douala, guitar in hand, and caught the ear of Manu Dibango and Prince Nico Mbarga. His first hit, Dikendis / This And This, was released in 1978. The following year he published L’Homme de Chèvre (« The Goat Man »), after the nickname earned by his animal imitations on stage. There he unfurled his makossa, seasoned with wakawaka, his trademark. In 1980 he appeared at the Montreux Festival, whose recording provided the material for his album En Europe. Tokoto Ashanty also had a small film career as an actor and had turned to storytelling as well. After a long illness, he died in 2013.