Cameroonian poet, novelist and slam artist Marc Alexandre Oho Bambe, known as Capitaine Alexandre, returns in 2026 with a double project: a poetry collection and a music album, both rooted in the energy of his native city, Douala.
Born in Douala, he is a founding member of the artistic collective On a slamé sur la lune and made his name with acclaimed novels such as Diên Biên Phù (2018) and Les Lumières. At 50, he now publishes Poèmes de plein jour et mots mantras pour traverser la nuit, released in 2025 by Mémoire d'encrier and available in Europe since the 2026 literary rentrée.
Alongside it, the artist releases Salsa Makossa, an album drawing on makossa, Cameroon's emblematic musical genre, while opening it up to Caribbean influences.
The choice is deliberate: by pairing a local musical genre with sounds from elsewhere, Oho Bambe places his work within a Cameroonian cultural tradition that he consciously opens to contemporary influences.
This dual release fits into a broader movement in which African artists treat their cultural heritage as raw material for universally resonant creation, rather than as mere folklore.
For Cameroon's cultural scene, publication with a respected Quebec house like Mémoire d'encrier offers rare international visibility — and could, in its own modest way, revive interest in a makossa genre now facing competition from the rise of urban genres like Afrobeats.
