K-Tino

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K-Tino (Cathérine Edoa Ngoa) is a Cameroonian singer who shot to fame in her home country with her energetic bikutsi music. This music from the central part of the country, around the capital Yaoundé, became very popular in Cameroon during the 1980s and 1990s. As the political power basis shifted from the north to the south, a cultural renaissance of the Beti-Pahuin people living in the south, i.e. the Ewondo, Beti and Bulu, occurred.

Bikutsi music is characterized by an up-tempo 6/8 rhythm, danced with energetic pulsations of shoulders and/or pelvis. For more than ten years now, K-Tino (on earlier albums Catino) has been one of the main exponents of bikutsi. Her lyrics are quite explicit, although she herself denies that she is "vulgar": "dire que ma musique est obscène, c'est dire que la langue ewondo est obscène" ("to say that my music is obscene, is like saying that the Ewondo language itself is obscene" ICCnet Cameroun, 2000). Song titles such as Action 69, Viagra, Ascenseur ("Elevator"), Casse Bambou, La queue de ma chatte ("My pussy's tail") etc. can be interpreted as explicitly as you wish though.

She is undoubtedly one of the most consistent and exciting performers in modern Bikutsi. Bikutsi has always been known to push boundaries with its lyrics, and K-Tino is a modern day master of the genre. Her song, Condom, c'est bon, advocates the use of condoms in the struggle against HIV/AIDS in a light-hearted fashion.