Skip James, for me, is the meaning of the blues.
When I was a child, there was an old man who toured the villages with just a guitar. The first time I heard him singing Skip James songs, I thought he was singing in an African language.
I am from the Bantu people, and Skip James's music sounded like Bantu music and really talked to me.
Within a language, you have your roots, your culture, and I think and dream in Bassa. We have 260 languages in Cameroon, but the official ones are French and English.
One day I asked myself, 'What do I have to sell in this world?' And I realised, well, I only can sell what I have in my bag, and what I have in my bag is my past, and this is Cameroon. This is the raw material of my career.
I'm a citizen of the world.
I don't see myself anywhere specifically, but you can't deny that, in terms of opportunities to create or be an entrepreneur, Africa is a boulevard - it's still all to be done there. And as an African guy, as a Cameroonian, I will obviously do as many things as I can over there.
All the kids had to sing every Sunday to draw in people from the neighboring villages. Every day, we woke up at 5 A.M. to pray and to rehearse the songs. We had no choice!
My father wanted me to go to France, U.S. or Japan to study. I told him I wouldn't go anywhere, I'd stay in Cameroon and do my music with my friends. He said that the devil was in me and called a priest to remove it. I was the only guy who didn't want to go to Europe - he thought I was crazy.
When I moved to Paris, I understood where I was coming from. Before that, I wasn't aware how Cameroonian I was! I realized our tradition and languages make me completely different. At that moment, I decided to try to use my music to explain to people about my continent and its problems.
A human born somewhere in this world doesn't have the same chances as another one born in Paris, England, or the U.S. We don't have the same chances at the beginning.
