Douala: Artists boycotts a conference for musicians

Some artist decided to boycott a conference for musicians which held in Douala yesterday. According to reports this conference was organized by one of them Marko Mbella who heads a new platform put in place by arts and culture minister to look into problems raised by artist. The meeting which had its venue changed saw a drop in attendance. The organizers explain it was due to change of venue that the turnout was small. The meeting aimed at bringing long lasting solutions to their crises and talk on author’s rights.

Sources say during the meeting which saw the absence of some big names like Ben Ndeca, papion and others, artist proposed that CMC and SOCAM be dissolve and a new association created.  They also discussed on obtaining electoral cards, internal rules and regulation of their association.

According to Marko Mbella the minister’s call for the meeting is to work on a new collective effort to manage author’s rights in music, propose internal rules and regulations, electoral codes and to manage technical and financial resources to organize the general assembly while proposing ways to dissolve the two former associations and grate a new one by merging the two associations. The association will have a new management team with a new constitution to govern it.

The legality of CMC was questioned and others proposed a complete dissolution of both CMC and SOCAM to create a new association for artist in Cameroon. Boycott in Douala has been seen by observers as a long way to show how divided Cameroonian artists are and many say this is the main cause of their problems.