Giovani lupi dalle lunghe zanne. Metamorofosi dell'arte alla chefferie di Bandjoun

This article is the result of an ethnographic research I’m carrying out in the Bamileke region (Cameroon) since 2002. It is an analysis of the role played in the Bandjoun’s chiefdom by “traditional art” and local artists, which articulate global mediascapes and local cultural constructions, giving them a visible form. More specifically, I studied the ways in which an artist, Tzuakou Innocent, carved a personal and divergent expressive space in an important place of the collective Bandjoun identity, the "house of happiness" or "house of the people "(nemo), the sacred building expressing the unity of the people around their king (fo). Through the action of an artist, the media imaginary (football, music, the advertising) penetrated the heart of neo-tradition codified by the elites, assembling the local and global, but also revealing their points of disjunction. The result is something "new" that cannot be placed neither on the side of the global flows nor on the side of a cultural closure, but that looks as a cultural openness, as an expression of a social dissent made visible by the unpredictable individual agency of an artist. Finally, I analyze the ways in which, through the imposition of "classic" and "neo-traditional" styles, this gap is at least partially closed. Nevertheless, more than a return to the past, this is an attempt to metabolize the change, redefining the divergent elements in a politically useful way, rather than simply suppressing them.