It is already a common observation in Cameroonian music to see English-speaking artistes drift from singing in English and their mother tongues at 100% to singing both in English and French at a 70% to 30% ratio and finally to singing at more than 90% in French. The phenomenon can be witnessed in some big English speaking acts such as Stanley Enow, Jovi, Magasco, Mr Leo and Daphne. The issue has been raised more than once by bloggers, media personnel and disgruntled fans, and they all seemed to question whether singing predominantly or solely in French is the way to go for English speaking artistes.
As many times as the question was asked one answer came up, a lot of people justified the drastic switch to French by the fact that Cameroon even though being bilingual is largely of a Francophone population, in order for Cameroonian artistes to be able to reach out to more persons they absolutely have to sing in French, some people have actually praised Cameroonian artistes who make this shift.
The English language before the population explosion of China was the most spoken language in the world and even today it is still more widely used in the world and this applies even to Africa. So it might directly imply that for the artistes who want to improve their impact and the influence of their music on the international scene, it will be wiser to sing in English as it is more widely spoken in the world and as such it is better suited to reach out to more people worldwide. This can be proven true by some international acts such as Fally Ipupa who is from a totally Francophone nation but tries to put some of his lyrics in English in order to reach out to more people but yet Cameroonian artistes rather sing in French for the pleasure of the local public. This choice of the French language as the main language in music by most artistes now seems not be a so great idea.
The One Africa Music Fest which is scheduled to hold on the 16th November 2018 in Dubai seems to be an eye opener, as despite the hard work Cameroonian artistes have been putting into their music not even one of them was invited to perform on that stage. Upon looking at the list of artistes we could see that they were predominantly English speaking and the one French speaking artiste present in Awilo Logomba who once includes English in his lyrics. So we are left to wonder if the over emphasis on the French language by Cameroonian artistes is going to hurt them at the international level. What are thoughts on this?