Jâbeâ
To describe this album as a wild sonorous ride seems appropriate. Especially when superimposed against the backdrop of even crazier antecedents. Cameroonian singer, songwriter and bassist Jeano Elong hails from the village of Eboné, located an estimated three-hour drive north of the country's economic capital, the coastal city Douala. And although he has meanwhile settled in Hamburg, his backstory is one of hardship, struggle and presumably the occasional fortuitous episode.
Leaving his native Cameroon behind, Elong first landed in the Libyan capital of Tripolis, where he worked as a welder in the port and later ran his own workshop. When NATO began bombing Libya to bolster the rebel uprising against the country's notorious ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi, the military forced him to take his welding capacities to a camp, where his job was to weld missile launch pads to army jeeps. When NATO bombed his camp, fearing for his life, he decided to flee. After a perilous crossing to the island of Lampedusa, he was transferred to various refugee camps in Italy, until the Italian government finally provided him with the necessary papers to travel north and he was able to reach Germany.
Arriving in Hamburg in 2013, he joined the Lampedusa refugee protests and in 2014 began working with the activist musical collective Schwabinggrad Ballett & Arrivati, where he met fellow activist, journalist, author, guitarist, producer and labelhead Christoph Twickel and Ted Gaier (of Goldene Zitronen fame – an iconic fun-punk band on Hamburg's 1980s underground circuit that is active to this day). He played bass and sang on the collective's 2016-released album "Beyond Welcome" (Buback Records) and penned the refugee anthem "Don't Fuck Up".
Fast forward to November 2024 and we get so see Jeano Elong release his debut album on Twickel's newly-founded Not OK Records imprint. Recorded in Gaier's Art Blakey Studio with Twickel and Gaier at the controls, "Jâbeâ" sees Elong put his musical talents on full display. A "bastard" (just quoting the press release here) blend of Cameroonian and African styles (such as Makossa, Bikutsi or Hilife) with two of Hamburg's finest pushing the envelope on production, this 11-track discourse has Elong narrating the affair in his native Bakaka, with just two songs presented in English and French respectively.
Speaking on the aforementioned "Beyond Welcome" LP, Elong remembers when he first played back the album for his mother: "She said: 'That's nice, but I can't understand what you're singing.' My mother doesn't speak French or English, so I started writing songs in my own language." To call this a 'happy end' would not do this oeuvre justice, assuming this is more of a new beginning for Elong and his renowned collaborators, a musical renaissance one might say. "Jâbeâ" in our minds deserves way more attention to detail than we could provide in this brief recap, with each track having its very own backstory steeped in meaning and thoroughly premeditated. And so we come full circle when we say the following: Listening to this album and honing in on the masterful musical elements as well as the versatile delivery reflects an 'art de vivre' as well as a 'joie de vivre' that is easily savoured, but audibly refrains from sugarcoating the many faces of injustice. Chapeau to everyone involved!
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