This chapter analyzes the music of two military bands: Zangalewa of Cameroon and Zao of Congo-Brazzaville. Zangalewa is the marching band of the presidential guard in Cameroon. Part of its “Suffering Soldier's Medley,” a self-deprecating military entertainment piece, was actually a subtle politico-cultural parody, couched in jester's garb, that lampoons the brutal and oppressive Cameroon army. For its part, Zao is a “pseudo military” band, a civilian band that adopted a military persona and uses subtle satire couched in humor to critique the military and militarism. The author analyzes the politico-cultural contexts and lyrics of both bands within the framework of metaphorical couching, the embedment of messages in humor. Both bands couched criticism of the authorities in humor and African metaphors, sayings, and proverbs expressed in a mixture of English, French, pidgin, and African dialects to bypass censorious gatekeepers.
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The Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) World Cup tournament is one of the world's biggest sporting events. The 2010 FIFA World Cup competition was held in South Africa, the first time the quadrennial competition, which was inaugurated in 1930, was held on the African continent.
To ensure that each World Cup competition reflect the cultural geography of the host country, FIFA commissions a logo and theme song drawn from the culture of the host nation or nations. Thereafter, promotional material and merchandise is produced to market the competition, celebrate its universal humanistic goals, and support participating national teams.
The official theme song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was “Waka Waka (Esto es África)” in Spanish, and Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) in English.” This piece of music is a medley of African and world music styles cobbled together (remixed) by Arab-Colombian singer-songwriter, Shakira, and featuring the South African band, Freshlyground, (Mackey, 2010). The catchy and memorable theme song literally globalized and memorialized the 2010 FIFA World Cup. What most listeners were not aware of is that the core rhythms, melodies and refrain of Waka Waka were “sampled” (copied) from the 1986 hit song, “Zangalewa,” which was composed and recorded by the Cameroonian military band, “The Golden Sounds.” This band, which became popularly known as Zangalewa, after its hit song, was the official musical corps of the Garde présidentiel, the elite military corps that served as the praetorian guard of one of Africa’s longest serving authoritarian leaders, 85 year-old president Paul Biya of Cameroon who celebrated his 36th year in power in 2018 and was running for another seven-year term.. African disk jockeys took Zangalewa to Columbia and other Latin American countries where it became popular in nightclubs. In Shakira’s native Columbia, the song became known as “The Military” song. That is how she was introduced to it.
Waka Waka, which means “wanderer” or “rover” in West African pidgin English, reached the top 10 spot on popular music singles charts across Europe. It quickly became one of the most-watched tunes on YouTube, reaching 2.3 billion views (Fernandez, 2018). Waka Waka has also become a staple of the repertoire of high school and college marching bands in the United States and elsewhere. Zangalewa had been appropriated by global Big Music, emptied of its original critical message, and reduced to a danceable nightclub tune, and Americanized marching band music.
This was not the first time that military-themed or military-style African music had attained international success in the global musical stage. In 1982, Zao, a band from the People’s Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), a former French colony, won the Prix Découvertes Radio-France Internationale, a Francophone musical competition organized in Paris by French government-owned international broadcaster, Radio France Internationale. Zao used its international exposure to produce a number of hit songs that were successful in Francophone countries. The band’s most popular song, Ancien Combattant (Ex-serviceman or veteran) was released in 1984. It was a military-themed composition that parodied the military, and subtly criticized militarization, as well as the autocratic regimentation of life in Congo-Brazzaville by the Marxist-Leninist military regime of Colonel Sassou-Nguesso. Ancien Combattant became an immediate international hit.