Prince of Sawa blues
A guitarist, singer and percussionist rolled into one, Muntu Valdo is one of Cameroon’s multi-talented exports. Rose Skelton caught up with the charming musician to discuss his love of music
Two glass pots filled with coriander seeds and dried thyme sit on the table alongside a rat’s nest of cables, computers and screens. Thirty-six-yearold Muntu Valdo is working on his new album, laying down harmonies, guitar solos, harmonica melodies and percussion tapped out on the body of the guitar. Picking up the glass pots, he starts a new rhythm, shaking them in time to the music and smiling infectiously before turning to the computer and gently teasing the track’s sound levels.
It is a one-man operation, though it’s impossible to tell from listening to the tracks, which sound like a 10-man band rolling out blues and funk shaded with soft bossa nova and sweet soul. Although Valdo recorded his debut album Moiye na Muititi (Gods and Devils) with a large band in 2005 at home in Cameroon, he is now in London on his own. But he’s succeeded, through skill and ingenuity, in taking the big-band sound with him.
Valdo grew up in Cameroon, near the port city of Douala. “Douala is a very hot city, in all senses,” he says as he takes a break from recording. “The weather is hot and the people are hot!” The city has a large, vibrant population, all living in close proximity to each other. “It’s very humid there, but we have beautiful beaches,” he says fondly.
Valdo began playing the guitar when he was just eight years old and was brought up surrounded by music, with French, American and Cameroonian songs blaring out of the bars in town. He was inspired by the complex set of some 300 languages of his country and grew up speaking French, English and his own language, Douala of the Sawa people.
But in the 1990s, unemployment in Cameroon was so high that Valdo, a law graduate, had trouble finding work. He remembers: “Music was the first thing that gave me money and allowed me to be on my own and not rely on my parents.” It was Cameroonian musician and producer Eko Roosevelt who offered Valdo a job in his band as he toured around the country. Eventually he left the band, and also Africa, to set up on his own in Paris.
After the success of his debut album, Valdo did an eight-city tour of Cameroon in 2007 alongside the Alliance Franco-Camerounaise. He found that living in Europe for some years meant he was seeing his own country with fresh eyes. “Cameroon is very diverse, but I regret that a lot of Cameroonians, especially young people, don’t know their own country,” he says. “The west is very cool, with mountains and plains. The north is savannah, the weather dry and hot like Senegal. The south has a lot of rainforest.”
Having spent so many years outside Africa, Valdo also regrets that he hasn’t had a chance to explore the continent. “I would love to go to Dakar,” he says, “because I read a lot of [books by] Cheikh Anta Diop (the Senegalese historian) and I would like to visit Youssou N’Dour’s club Thiossane. I would also love to go to Abidjan – it used to be a big crossroads for musicians and was once the biggest city in Francophone West Africa. There’s also the palace of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa that I would like to visit and the pyramids in Egypt. I am African but I don’t know much about Africa, except for its history.”
As well as having a loyal following in Cameroon, Valdo has made a name for himself in London as a charismatic one-man blues band who plays his concerts barefoot. “It’s not a fashion statement,” he will tell a rapt audience, “but I need my toes to help me play this music!” At his feet are a complex series of foot pedals, knobs and cables which he uses to record and play back elements of his live show. Sometimes he records the audience clapping, incorporating this into his song. Another time the harmonica will weave a wondrous melody through uplifting guitar riffs. Then he abandons his instruments completely and sings a cappella, recording each line of his voice and laying it over the last harmony, creating a multilayered sound that is stunning in its simplicity.
Valdo enjoys his new home in London. “I haven’t really discovered the city because I’ve been focused on recording,” he says. “But I like London because the music scene is big, like Paris, and I like Londoners because they are funky and free in their mind.” His favourite place to stroll is Brick Lane. But he also likes Soho for its music scene and often goes to places like Spice of Life to catch young musicians jamming.
The new album will be finished this year and, come spring, he’ll be touring festivals around the globe. He may only be a one-man band but, as his audiences will tell you, he makes a lot of fine music.