Idy Oulo Downloads

Born in 1977 in Mayo-Oulo in the mountains north of Cameroun into the ethnic group "fali and peuls".Idrissou-Mana, (which is his Muslim name), began his musical life in the traditional music of the Savannah close to the griots and shepherds of his village, Mayo-oulo, a small district of the... Learn More »

Born in 1977 in Mayo-Oulo in the mountains north of Cameroun into the ethnic group "fali and peuls".
Idrissou-Mana, (which is his Muslim name), began his musical life in the traditional music of the Savannah close to the griots and shepherds of his village, Mayo-oulo, a small district of the province of North Garoua (Cameroon).
"Mayo" means river in French and "Oulo" means arrow (in their native spoken language). "Arrow" because his ancestors fought much for the existence of their village against the warriors nearby who wanted to monopolize them in the 12th centuary.

Idy-Oulo takes his influences from Makossa, Bikutsi and the Rumba-Congolaise which is generally played by Cameroonian musicians, for example : Manu Dibango, Françis-Bébé, Anne-Marie-Nzie or Yanick-Noah. Idy makes a revelation of the Rate/rhythm, Ngoumba-Balewa that is to say a mixture between the Savannah and the Ngoumba-Balewa forest ("fantasm of the body").

Avec le groupe FADAAH KAWTAL
Idy plays a Garaya (a papaya with two strings, an instrument played by griots and Bergers) and this instrument can also be looked upon as a kind of Ngoni with two cords which is played in the Sahélienne areas of Africa generally
by people from the Mandingue culture.
He also plays the Sanza which originally comes from the Pygmies of the forest of South Cameroon. With all these influences and instruments one hears in the compositions of this artist a mixture of African world-Music and Reggae.

While he was very young Idy-Oulo started as an apprentis of the Gaya and manufactured his first instrument using recycled material. He then created a group from school and proceeded to interpret songs by well-known artists.
But this was not easily done being somewhat frowned upon by his father and the people of the village.

Idy later on moved to Douala, the economic capital and also the capital of cameroonian show business, and joined in 1996 as guitarist, singer and accompanist, the group Faadah-Kawtal, the very same group which recorded the original soundtrack of the French film, Le Maître des Eléphants de Jacques Dutront and Patrick-G Perret.


After they finished their services in Masa (the Ivory Coast) en1997, the group were invited to take part in the opening ceremony of the World Cup in France in 1998. Then came a European tour in 2000, where upon Idy decided to move to France after the group performed in a festival called, "Musique Metisses" in Angoulême. At this point, Idy studied guitar at the conservatoire of Angoulême and at the MJC "Louis Aragon" in Ma Campagne.
Idy thus decided to go solo and later in 2002 represented himself in a competition called Musique et Danse en Poitou-Charente. He won first prizeas well as becoming finalist in the competition "Decouverte des Printemps" at Bourges.

Today, Idy-Oulo records his adventures as soloist accompanied by local musicians from the Charente region of France.
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