Pop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976-1984 (2017)
12 tracks, 67 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes
The thing with reviewing albums for publication is that you usually cannot base your opinions on the long-term, slowly matured listening experiences that people who buy the album would typically get. There just isn’t the time. You can listen to it once and gain the important first impressions, maybe give it a second go through to give yourself a chance to catch things you missed the first time, usually while reading the sleeve notes and doing a little deeper research, but by then the deadline is already closing in and you have to write the bloody thing. Perhaps you listen to one or two specific moments to inform the specifics of your review, but then it’s written and you have to send it off to get printed and then it’s crystallised in ink-and-paper for posterity.
I’m not saying that album reviews are bad – of course I’m not, I do a big bunch of them. I think they can give potential audiences a useful window into the music and its wider context and be very helpful in deciding whether the album would be right for them or not. Besides, reviews can be entertaining to read in their own write (lol).
But human brains are weird. When we listen to things once, we don’t hear it in the same way as when we listen to it for the second or 30th time. The brain makes new connections and neural pathways with every repetition and it changes how we think and feel. That’s why you can listen to a crappy pop song on the radio and near-despise it, but then a few weeks of enforced exposure later you’re singing along and buying tickets to see the artist live. The results of this repeated listening are usually difficult to gauge – and near impossible to review.
I reviewed Pop Makossa for a magazine when it first came out a couple of years ago, and I gave it an overall positive review. I talked a bit about the history of the makossa genre and its importance to the Cameroonian people; I talked about the particular sub-genres that this compilation represents, mentioned a couple of highlights and expressed my admiration for its in-depth accompanying booklet. It’s all true and I stick by what I said, but reflecting on it now, I reckon I’d write something a bit different.
Because the tracks that have stuck with me, two years later, aren’t the ones I expected. Of the two tracks I mentioned in the review, I wouldn’t have been able to recall how they sounded if I hadn’t have relistened to it just now (and they’re still good). In fact, it’s actually the very song that I disliked most the first few times around, the one that made me cringe in its cheesiness, that has slowly become a track I come back to again and again. It’s my go-to track from the album, now. No matter how embarrassing the synth lines are, or that most of the backing sounds a bit like some dodgy disco keyboard setting, the fact is that it’s catchy af and a little part of my brain has been singing it over and over ever since I first heard it. It’s just been lodged in there and the repeated brain-listenings have completely won me over. It’s my favourite track on the album now, and I love it with no irony whatsoever.
Album reviews are an important part of how we interact with music, and they’re a valuable part of the recorded music ecosystem. But they can only ever really discuss the album as it hits the ear. They can’t review how its contents rattle around your head after you’ve listened to it, after a week, or a month or years later. That’s the adventure that you have to take for yourself. And you never know quite where it will lead you.
The best track on this album, by the way, is ‘Nen Lambo’ by Bill Loko. Have a listen to it. Maybe you’ll like it or maybe you won’t, but let me know how you feel in 2021.
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