L’Oiseau Rare, one of Gabon’s artists of the Ntcham genre. LOISEAU_RARE_8G / IG. Photo 2: Poster for Ali Bongo. DAVID STANLEY / FLICKR. Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC.
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The Sonic Politics of Gabon’s Ntcham
L’Oiseau Rare, one of Gabon’s artists of the Ntcham genre. LOISEAU_RARE_8G / IG. Photo 2: Poster for Ali Bongo. DAVID STANLEY / FLICKR. Photo illustration by Dami Mojid / THE REPUBLIC.
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The Sonic Politics of Gabon’s Ntcham
Over the past six years, Gabon’s ntcham genre has dominated the musical scene of Libreville and the Gabonese diaspora, becoming pervasive across bars, nightclubs, street vendor stalls, and mobile phones. Marked by a unique meld of 808 bass lines, BPM (beats per minute) ranging between 110 and 123, claps, flutes, whistles, and exhilarating toplines—as well as humorous and sometimes crude lyrics imbued with the slang of the Libreville ndoss (street bandits)—ntcham has nailed the formula for musical success. Fueled by a booming Gabonese streaming industry, ntcham artists continue to shatter records, attracting millions of hits previously reserved for international celebrities.
Ntcham meanwhile provides a poignant mirror and entry point to understanding the sociopolitical transformations underway in Gabon since 2018, punctuated by the seminal coup d’état that brought transitional president, Brigadier General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, to power in August 2023. Born out of a multisectoral crisis following the re-election of former president, Ali Bongo in August 2016—which extended the long-standing Bongo dynasty in a controversial election marked by irregularities—the genre has evolved to become both the soundtrack of and witness to the Gabonese youth’s attempts at escape, diversion, and hustling. Through its irony, stark crudeness, and gimmicks mirroring urban realities, ntcham embodies the moral and sociopolitical shifts occurring among young Gabonese under the ongoing transition.
SONIC CREATIVITIES IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Drawing its name from a slang term meaning ‘fighting’, ntcham emerged in Libreville in the early 2010s, initially as a dance inspired by the gestures of bandits who reigned in the mapanes (slums) and in the central prison of Libreville. Ntcham evokes the world of banditry through its movements drawn from robbery, fighting, snatching, machete games, and brawls in bars and party places. It rapidly became identified as the dance of the ndoss: the thieves and bandits of Libreville. Drawing from previous urban dance styles (classique, bolo, jazzé), the ntcham dance style quickly gained popularity in high schools and colleges, coinciding with the rise of online challenge exercises, which rap and urban music artists started to use to promote their soundtracks.
The consolidation of ntcham as a concrete musical genre came later through artists who focused on the narration of ordinary illicit activities and petty crimes in the mapanes (poor districts in Gabonese cities). Initially, it was a young Gabonese artist named Don’zer who sketched out some of its characteristic traits in 2016 in a track named ‘Goudronnier’. The song celebrates the ‘sense’ (cleverness) of the streets and describes how robbers of the Akébé district, an extremely poor neighbourhood famous for criminality, survive thanks to ‘taxation,’ the art of ‘extracting’ income through theft and illicit means. As a festive and exhilarating celebration of the brutality of everyday life and the strategies of ‘fala’ (the fight for something, primarily money), drug consumption, and ‘taper la cha’ (snatching), this song and others propelled ntcham to the rank of a new aesthetic manifestation of the ndoss of Libreville.
Amid the rising popularity of Don’zer, particularly in 2020, many young men began making a name for themselves by broadcasting covers of popular Nigerian and Ghanaian Afrobeat tracks, recorded with minimal budgets. Among them, L’Oiseau Rare gained notoriety during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown via various Facebook videos after being released from prison, where he had been locked due to thefts. He gradually became one of the most acclaimed and streamed artists in Gabon from 2021 to 2023. With tracks such as ‘En bandit’, he recounts the omnipresence of illicit exchanges—not only in the practices of the ndoss, but also among young girls, high school students, teachers, or pastors, who counter the pain by djiguant (reigning) as bandits. By describing the everyday presence of drug consumption and new forms of prostitution through online ‘placements,’ L’Oiseau Rare and other ntcham artists give voice to the banalization of ordinary criminal activities and the street cultures that have emerged from popular despair at the new authorities.
Indeed, following the disputed re-election of Ali Bongo in 2016 and the riots and repression that ensued, the country plunged into a multisectoral crisis and deep instability, already precipitated by the drop in oil prices. From 2018 onwards, the president’s stroke and growing control of the Bongo family’s circles in strategic positions across the country stifled critics and aggravated discontentment, concurrently reflected by and warded off by ntcham. Although many artists are not themselves related to banditry, the genre’s identity consists of offering a realistic, critical, and somewhat cynical mirror to the ordinary violence and absurdities of the Gabonese streets. The popularization of the genre has been enabled by new technologies of diffusion and dissemination, as well as novel sonic-economic circuits that the digital realm both revealed and enhanced.
BLESSED KINGS AND WEALTHY COMMANDERS: PATRONAGE ECONOMIES IN TRANSITION
From 2018 onwards, the technology-enabled proliferation of ntcham in street life and urban zones began to dismantle the rules of censorship that governed traditional media. Ntcham artists and promoters began spreading their transgressive narratives and aesthetics through platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube to enhance their appeal through challenges and influencers’ trends. They also profited from the emergence of self-taught music video directors, who gave them access to millions of views on YouTube and TRACE TV.
However, their popularization beyond Facebook circles and access to musical ‘professionalism’ was also largely based on the intercession of new forms of patrons and entrepreneurs, particularly for the generation of artists emerging after 2020. From 2022, ntcham songs were flooded with references to a mysterious character: le Roi Béni (‘the Blessed King’). L’Oiseau Rare, Général Ithachi, and Pablito Traducteur all praised the generosity of this patron, described as ‘the inexhaustible source’ of their productions. Music fans later discovered, via online activists, that the Roi Béni was a former inmate of the central prison in Libreville who had enriched himself through the trafficking of cigarettes and intramural goods, of which he had become the all-powerful trader. According to stories circulating in the city and on digital networks, it was once he was released from jail that he made his fortune in business, establishing himself as a key figure in the capital’s drug trade. Frequently seen driving at the wheel of numerous luxury cars in popular neighbourhoods where he distributed banknotes, or dispensing advice through live videos on Facebook, he became the supplier of the means of production for various budding artists, providing cars or cash for shooting music videos.
Because of his origins in prison and the mysterious origins of his wealth, le Roi Béni apparently breaks with a long-standing tradition of patronage by elites related to the party in power. Yet the networks and acquaintances he wove reveal a complex mixture of state institutions and criminal economies. In 2023, le Roi Béni launched a contest to select the best song in support of the candidate, Ali Bongo, and showed his support to the Parti Démocratique Gabonais (PDG)—a party in power since 1968—by campaigning in the neighbourhoods for the election. According to several artists who spoke with me but chose to remain anonymous, le Roi Béni apparently received huge volumes of money from the party to ensure that he would use his influence in the streets and among young ndoss to counteract looting and rebellion after the transmission of election results.
During the same period, a label was created under the impulse of Mohamed Ali Saliou, the director of the cabinet of Noureddin Bongo (son of President Ali Bongo, who since his father’s 2018 stroke, has gained notable power). According to my anonymous sources, Saliou invests substantial amounts of money to hire and sign contracts with some of the most famous figures of ntcham, such as Eboloko, Fetty Ndoss, and EJ; and to finance the recording of collaborations with Nigerian and Ghanaian Afrobeats figures such as Oxlade and Shatta Wale.
As seen in the cases of the Roi Béni and Shazy Records, ntcham productions weave new circuits of illicit trafficking with ordinary patronage by elders and elites, profiting from new criminal political economies built at the intersection between the public and the private, as well as the state and the non-state. Other discreet patrons of ntcham whose names are quoted in popular songs include a commander in the Republican Guard and digital entrepreneurs who made their empires through cryptic means.
These connections and the involvement of ntcham artists in the election and its aftermath became the topic of heated debates around the 2023 presidential election, generating unforeseen repercussions across the music industry.
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‘KOUNABELISTS IN CHIEF’: RISE, FALL, AND RISE AGAIN OF NTCHAM IN 2023
In August 2023, a few weeks before the elections, L’Oiseau Rare and several other ntcham artists such as Eboloko, Fetty Ndoss, and EJ committed themselves to Ali Bongo and the PDG through songs of support and campaign concerts. In doing so, they continued a long history of popular artists’ involvement in political animations and performances of power through music and spectacle, which have integrated hip hop artists into the political system since the 2000s. They were immediately booed on social media and in the streets, by their audience or peers, for their perceived support of a predatory system; and accused of plunging the Gabonese into destitution and criminality, insolently looting state coffers, abusing the failing health of a president, and preparing to repeat the electoral falsification already seen in 2009 and 2016.
Ntcham artists, along with other figures of local pop music, were thus somewhat turned into new personifications of the so-called ‘kounabelism’ on social media and in popular discussions. This term is a reference to the cultural animation group (Kounabéli) of the former first lady of Gabon and other groups that formerly praised Omar Bongo and his single PDG party. Its usage as an insult and interpellation appeared after 2009, when President Ali Bongo increasingly used hip hop artists to enhance his popularity. It serves now to denounce the artists and more generally the citizens who praise and commit themselves to the ruling elites in exchange for inclusion in the spheres of power and access to its clientelist redistribution networks.
In August 2023, anti-kounabelist criticisms against ntcham were initially voiced by a minority of artists, fans, and digital activists who kept their distance from campaign shows and were themselves partly marginalized and surveyed by elites in power. The rumour remained barely audible in official media and was partly ignored by the so-called ‘kounabelist’ artists, convinced of the future victory of the PDG and the rationality of their choices. Fees and connections to the circuits of monetary redistribution took precedence.
However, when members of the military forces overthrew Ali Bongo’s government on 30 August 2023, the denunciation of kounabelism suddenly became the new legitimate discourse in public media, cultural shows, and social networks. No sooner was Ali Bongo removed from power than the bashing of artists affiliated with the PDG intensified, alongside the liberation of speech. The anti-kounabelist wave that exploded in September 2023 revealed the extent of division, resentment, and muted anger that had been brewing in musical circles (and civil society) for several years.
LOOTING AND CYNICISM AS A RELATIONSHIP TO THE GABONESE STATE
From August 2023, the rise to power of the Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (CTRI) and Brigadier General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema led to a seemingly rapid recomposition of musical circles, reflected in cultural events, online exchanges, appointments, and new music. For the first few months after the election, ntcham artists were almost mute, and the wave of anti-kounabelist critics led to the closure of their social media and YouTube accounts. Many popular musical artists who had openly supported Ali Bongo remained almost invisible on official stages and in the media for several months, though maintaining their fame and popularity.
However, in December 2023, two artists (including McBright, a winner of the prize dispensed by the Blessed King in March 2023) released a track whose ironic content and cynicism responded to this hypocritical witch-hunt. In the video, two protagonists dressed in ‘Ali for All’ T-shirts excitedly crowd the streets of the mapane, galvanized by the proceeds obtained from their participation in the candidate’s rallies. They then appear captive and wounded, in the hands of a group of neighbourhood youths who express their anger at accomplices of the system. Finally, we see the two singers performing in front of the camera, accompanied by a jubilant crowd of young people, ironically commenting on the stigmatization and critique they receive as ‘kounabelists’. They ‘dispel shame’ by displaying envelopes filled with money received for their participation in meetings and by taking advantage of the funds accumulated in nightclubs, surrounded by young women.
Kounabélistes in Perpetuity,
I’m on the left, I’m on the right, there’s the recipe, eh’,
While you are eating my name, I already have my villa at PK 27 [on the outskirts of Libreville]
They find me arrogant like Bilie By Nzé [Ali Bongo’s former prime minister],
They want to minimize me.
The elections are over, but the fees of the meetings are here: we have saved money!
By praising the strategic opportunism and shameless utilitarianism that so-called Kounabelist artists deploy during the campaigns, the song reflects a revanchist attitude towards the capture of resources and arrogance of the elites for personal success and survival, embodied in the construction of villas, access to women’s bodies, and nightlife. As in this video, ntchameurs assume a moral economy of capture and taxation that responds to the illicit profits of governmental actors with an attitude of pillage and insists on its widespread presence. Through the ironic content and self-mockery of the songs published after the CTRI came to power, ntchameurs hold up a mocking mirror to the aporia and duplicity of post-coup reconstruction.
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TRANSITION AND ‘RESTORATION’ APORIA
One year after the coup d’état of August 2023, the all-powerful transitional president spreads a message of restoration, calling for a reappropriation of patriotism and traditional values, and a purification of public institutions. Major political figures of the previous system have been dismissed and publicly banished, though without formal trial or judgment. Roads are being built at an exceedingly fast pace, and a process of inclusive national dialogue (Dialogue National Inclusif) was initiated in April 2024. Several artists were called to perform at the opening ceremony, including a rapper formerly labelled as an opponent and exiled in France. On the musical side, labels such as Shazy Records were closed, and its directors’ goods seized.
The coup d’état has thus apparently radically reshuffled the deck, inverting positions that had been settled for decades between musicians and political elites, by placing former opponents and exiled artists in the position of new leaders, and marginal critics as the official new discourse. Yet the coup has not erased the system of political animation and patronage that has long supported the maintenance of elites in power and the system of redistribution. As highlighted by ntcham artists, the spectrum of kounabelism keeps haunting the reconstruction and preoccupation of public discussions, particularly in the cultural sector, which manifests a strange sense of déjà-vu. From December 2023 to August 2024, the CTRI for instance organized a ‘republican tour’ in the nine provinces of the country, accompanied by performances of famed artists. Although the tour hired artists who used to be persona non grata, it still reproduced a tradition of spectacle, animation, and national unity that has long reflected an astute management of territorial divisions.
Behind the official scenes, a select few popular artists are also still invited to perform at private parties organized for the birthday celebrations of the transitional president’s family members or his own anniversaries; and mysterious patrons are more active than ever. Even if people suspected that his cars would be seized and he would be sent back to prison, Le Roi Béni has resettled into his position and retains an almost unscathed popularity among young bandits and artists. New discreet patrons of music labels have emerged straight after the coup, including a former aide-de-camp of Mohamed Ali Saliou who created a label that recuperated part of Shazy Records’ artists and took over its ambitious project of becoming the biggest music label in the industry.
Finally, as ‘tricksters’ navigating political change and turmoil, ntchameurs continue ascending in and disrupting the Gabonese musical landscape. One year after the coup and its public disavowal, ntcham is back to its highest levels of popularity. Parties and celebrations in the festive season of 2024 feel the beat of its exhilarating rhythms, while ntcham artists are busy showcasing on most weekends, spreading satirical narrations and haunting toplines across Libreville and the diaspora.
Today, ntcham artists continue to grow their presence through savvy usage of social media and digital monetization, patronage with new types of wealthy sponsors, and older practices of acquaintanceship with elites—building an evolving sonic space of evasion and reflection on contemporary issues among young Gabonese citizens⎈
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