11 Quotes by Blick Bassy

When I was a child, there was an old man who toured the villages with just a guitar. The first time I heard him singing Skip James songs, I thought he was singing in an African language.

I am from the Bantu people, and Skip James's music sounded like Bantu music and really talked to me.

Skip James, for me, is the meaning of the blues.

Within a language, you have your roots, your culture, and I think and dream in Bassa. We have 260 languages in Cameroon, but the official ones are French and English.

One day I asked myself, 'What do I have to sell in this world?' And I realised, well, I only can sell what I have in my bag, and what I have in my bag is my past, and this is Cameroon. This is the raw material of my career.

I'm a citizen of the world.

I don't see myself anywhere specifically, but you can't deny that, in terms of opportunities to create or be an entrepreneur, Africa is a boulevard - it's still all to be done there. And as an African guy, as a Cameroonian, I will obviously do as many things as I can over there.

All the kids had to sing every Sunday to draw in people from the neighboring villages. Every day, we woke up at 5 A.M. to pray and to rehearse the songs. We had no choice!

My father wanted me to go to France, U.S. or Japan to study. I told him I wouldn't go anywhere, I'd stay in Cameroon and do my music with my friends. He said that the devil was in me and called a priest to remove it. I was the only guy who didn't want to go to Europe - he thought I was crazy.