Cameroon, 1978: it’s like any good western movie. A man drifts through the plains at the furthest edge of the country in search of two former gunslingers, hoping to coax them out of retirement for one last showdown. Except this time, the weapons are guitars and the gunslingers are Jean Gabari and Messi Martin – the calm sheriff and his hot-headed deputy – who had led the band Los Camaroes to superstardom at the beginning of the decade. Los Camaroes emerged at the end of the 1960s from the town of Maroua in the northern, predominantly Islamic area of Cameroon. After changes in name, in lineup and in management, they worked their way south to the capital to make a name for themselves, in the span of only a few years they changed Cameroon’s music scene forever, leaving a trail of sold-out nightclubs and monster radio hits in their wake. Then, at the height of their popularity, they broke up. The band had been led from the beginning by Jean Gabari, whose level-headedness and evenhandedness inspired the respect and devotion of his musicians. But it was Gabari’s alchemical collaborations with guitarist Messi Martin that drove the band to its greatest heights. Martin had developed an innovation that would earn him fame throughout Cameroon as the “king of Bikutsi”, as Johnny Cosmos explains: “The primary instrument in Bikutsi is the balafon, and Messi came up with a trick that consisted of chewing small pieces of paper until they reached the right consistency and then stuck them between the strings of the guitar. This trick, which made a guitar sound like a balafon, catapulted him to stardom and turned him into the founder of Modern Bikutsi.” (Check the song “Bezimbi” to hear Messi Martin´s wizardry on a Bikutsi tune) Tracklist 1. Resurrection Los 6:53 2. Beton Sala 5:25 3. Miss Ya Ntem 4:40 4. Mindzuk Ya Enyin 5:43 5. Bezimbi 4:02 6. Mbembe Ndoman 5:22