Umthwalo, the Cultural Luggage

‘‘Creativity is a basic biological drive to engage in meaningful conversations with ourselves and the world around us.’’ Sara Saltee

LOKO BILLE KWIN ELSE LEILA T. aka Elsa is a young talented person I had the opportunity to stumble upon. This 24-year-old girl is a singer, a composer, a tailor, founder of musical event ‘’Un Café Avec’’ and owner of a bags line – Umthwalo.

In her ordinary life, she is a University student majoring in Marketing and For her birthday, I proposed her to give her voice for my blog series – Humans, and we were both excited to have this enriching talk. We spoke at length diving into a host of topics including her experience with the TV Show The Voice and I was blown away by both her endless energy and enthusiasm to open up and share throughout the interview.

I invite you to read through this exceptional and very authentic story tackling topics many contemporary young Africans feel concerned about but may not get the opportunity to find a like-minded one to open up to.

PS: The two main parts of the article - LET IT ALL BE MUSIC & UMTHWALO, MORE THAN JUST A BAG! - are a bit independent. While you have the freedom to read at your order of convenience, I recommend that you follow the order of the article to better piece things together.

LET IT ALL BE MUSIC!

‘‘I am from Douala but I currently live in Yaoundé and this has been for quite a while today. I have a passion for art in general and creativity. My interest in music is very fundamental to me and I am very concerned by our African culture that is why I came up with this idea of creating a Label I will be talking about shortly. Let’s get more insights into my musical luggage first!’’

‘‘I like to work close to the music industry. Everybody at home sings, so my passion for music came naturally. By my birth, my father had recorded an album on a cassette and we would listen to it every time. We eventually lost it - probably when we were changing houses – back in the time we lived in Garoua. My mother was in a Choir, so there was always some Music home.’’

First Steps In The Music Industry

‘‘I utterly expressed myself through music when I was a 9th grade student, and that’s when people noticed me ''Oh she can sing!''’’

‘‘I got involved in Music when I discovered Disney Chanel: with Miley Cirrus playing Hannah Montana, back in the time, I was around eleven or thirteen and I was a huge fan of it and would sing Hannah’s songs all day round. Mum and Dad used to listen to local music pretty much: Eboa Lotin, Grace Decca, Ben Decca, but still I was mostly into American songs, that I began to sing as I loved English from a very young age.’’

‘‘Besides, there was not a huge amount of people understanding nor speaking English back in the time, so I made English my secret language and began to write texts and songs to express my deepest thoughts and feelings without running the risk to get exposed.’’

‘‘My parents were very protective so I couldn’t do anything back in Garoua. When I moved to Yaounde then, I got into many things… I utterly expressed myself through music when I was a 9th grade student, and that’s when people noticed me ‘’Oh she can sing!’’

‘‘Entering the 11th grade, we moved again to another house and I met one of my best friends, her name is Luciola. I was singing at my balcony and she was singing at her balcony. We used to enjoy each other’s voices but in the dark, then a few times after we broke the ice and begun to sing, dance, learn and write songs together.’’

‘‘Luciola also had a friend –Annie, both were members of The Vogt High School’s Orchestra. Annie was working with someone in a Music Studio – Ele Moni, based in Mokolo, where she brought us and then we began to perform later on as a band. Our first band was named ‘’We Are the Future’’ and we were a group of eight including singers and rappers.’’

‘‘Later on, Luciola, Annie and I, formed a girls band with the three of us– ZETA, and we release a single: Oh My Casa. Around the same time, I had the chance to go to The Voice Afrique Francophone.’’

The Voice – A Bittersweet Symphony

‘‘What you can learn from these kinds of experiences in terms of life wisdom is astounding!’’

‘‘I can’t say my experience with the show The Voice was a huge success because I was not that confident, back in the time. And I would disbelief myself when even the coaches would behave otherwise, like in the time they turned their seats at the blind auditions, I was still skeptical even when facing the facts. I remember telling myself things like ‘’I don’t deserve this. They will find out how awful I am at singing, and they will just send me out, lol.’’

‘‘Me singing Eboa Lotin’s Elimba Dikalo song at the blind auditions and getting people blown away, I don’t take credit for it. I know I can sing sometimes so that people get touched, but that performance I’m not so proud of it.’’

‘‘I didn’t have enough time to realize I was actually in the game until when I was finally out, lol. But it was a great experience anyway. Facing Lesline at the battle and lose to her, made me realize how lucky I was to have been part of this show.’’

‘‘What you can learn from these kinds of experiences in terms of life wisdom is astounding!’’

First thing I have to say that competition is a way to see your limits and to discover different universes than yours, to know where your universe stops and where the other universes start.’’

‘‘For instance, before being part of The Voice, I’ve never been in contact with such a wide

variety of musical universes as I got to know there: I met Congolese, Gabonese, Togolese, Senegalese, all different cultures, different personalities, different ways of singing, different careers. Thanks to them, I could realize how vast the field of possibilities for me to hone my skillset is still to explore, so definitely, I think it’s enriching.’’

‘‘I remember when I was told my opponent for the battles, we didn’t see ourselves as enemies, rather we took time to speak about our personal lives, we became friends and would walk back to back and this got people surprised like ‘’you’re not here to do kind of friendship, you’re in an adventure, you have to fight.’’ But I am the kind of person that thinks that be that you’re fighting, it’s not something like a fight, it’s more like sharing, and if you did this together you won’t have no regrets. When you compete like that it’s always pleasant to have someone you can talk to and that understands your experience and what you’ve been through.’’

‘‘So I left the voice, with a Friend- Lesline, along with wisdom.’’

Celebrity and the Music Industry – The Backstage

‘‘Waking up to ''popularity'' comes along with a lot of pressure and stress’’

‘‘Before I went to the voice, I had to face a terrible event: the loss of my mother one year before. The pain and sorrow were still alive a year later. After returning from The Voice, the burden of knowing my mother forever gone made me feel lost, I stopped singing. ’’

‘‘Meanwhile, I had people rushed upon me to see me, and people texting me saying how good I changed their life: I just couldn’t believe what was going on. People would scream in the street like ‘’OMG! This is Elsa’’, my experience with The Voice made me popular! But I was mostly touched by those saying I changed their life, it was quite comforting and helped me keep things up.’’

‘‘Waking up to ‘‘popularity’’ comes along with a lot of pressure and stress ; I started having hundredths of friendship requests on social media and messages per day. Well, the thing is quite difficult to handle and even worse, when you have no manager by your side.’’

‘‘I was overwhelmed with the friendship requests that outnumbered my account’s capacity and not being able to respond to all the messages I’d receive a day got me labeled as a snob, and people would come in mean when on the contrary, those people accusing me were far from the truth. I even had people who just got my number from I don’t know where, and they harassed me! The way people reacted once they broadcasted my performance on TV was just sick! But, the brighter part – the part that I loved in it is the supportive messages of people from all over the world who were just trying to tell me “OMG, you did something great! I am proud of you and I encourage you to keep up!”

‘‘Experiencing tough moments like the loss of a loved one can cause you deep depressive mind states, going through a difficult time dealing with love affairs and stuff as well, so in those kinds of moments, music is really cathartic. I make my music to get the stress out of me, but the music industry tends to be stressful because there is this money thing and a lot of marketing behind it, making you sing not only to speak your truth but sometimes making you sing only to produce money. This is challenging when I know my Music is for my Mental Health even if the public doesn’t buy it!”

‘‘Anyway, whatever it is, I want to contribute to the Cameroonian music’s expansion and legitimacy.”

‘‘Un Café Avec’’ – Revamping local music drinking coffee... with friends!

‘‘Talking about promoting Cameroonian Music, I teamed up with some friends to found ‘’Un Café Avec…’’ (A Coffee With…). It’s a musical show aimed at making people love Live Music, to allow them to utterly consume their favorite music when it’s given in concerts because live music just brings you unique flavors and heights of enjoyment! It’s everything!

At those traditional concerts where the music is so loud and there’s a lot of people everywhere, you cannot utterly enjoy the performance, you’re just there because you love the artist on stage. You are there in a huge stadium, standing the entire concert long, not sure you’ll get close enough to the artist let alone take a picture with them.”

‘‘So my partners and I came up with a concept where we give to people the opportunity to get close to their favorite artists while they enjoy live music and make artists get close to their fans and while they perform on the stage.”

‘‘So, to make the experience even unique, our value proposition is a free cup of coffee; the opportunity to see the artist like really close, to get to talk to them, and take photos with them while they perform. We tend to make it cozy, so you can feel comfier, it’s just like you’re taking coffee with friends…”

‘‘It’s been only lately that Concerts started to get popular around Cameroon! Before there were not as many concerts as there are today, Concerts hosting local musicians hardly were a blast, it appears people were not so into it with locals, and it would require an external artist to make it. Now we are assisting to some sort of rebirth with events like the PAPOSY, leading the change.”

‘‘Talking about the concept’s popularity, we just did one session so far, we have had a lot of positive feedback from the audience attending the session with CYSOUL. People were just like ‘’Oh My God’’, they were so thrilled. So people really appreciated it thus I am quite optimistic about it.”

In this following part, we dive into her views on the African heritage and what Umthwalo truly represents for her, before being just a fashion accessory.

UMTHWALO, MORE THAN JUST A BAG!

“Umthwalo [...] means luggage[...] I envision it as cultural luggage”

Umthwalo is my bag’s brand. But Umthwalo is also a label I envision to incorporate several other projects to come!”

‘‘I've been to South Africa and I was just shocked by the way that young people love their culture over there, dancing their local dances, listening to their local music, telling you about their history, speaking their native languages and I just told myself “Why aren’t we like them? Why don’t we just lift our culture?”

‘‘They cherish their culture and art and strive to make it popular and they don’t speak ill about it. We have great stories here, but people just focus on our downsides. Traveling some places in Cameroon, I realized we are living in a crazy beautiful country and people just don’t see that. The things you learn meeting other cultures, it’s just awesome, it’s beautiful, there’s a lot yet to see! I want us to show the world how valuable our culture is to us, but it needs to be cherished first by us.”

“I believe there is so little we, modern-day Africans, do know about our real history.”

‘‘Umthwalo – originating from the Zulu – means luggage, thus it relates to my bags because they are actual luggage. But it is not only all about physical bags because I envision it as cultural luggage, like a bag that carries and passes down our African heritage to the next generations. I have a dramatic concern about our cultural heritage and our story as a people. I want our heritage – through our culture and true history – rehabilitated so it can live and thrive.”

‘‘I believe there is so little we, modern-day Africans, do know about our real history. I know there is so much more to find out than what we learn from the official history books. To carry out this vision, we need to hear from the elderly, those who witnessed those critical moments of our history happening, those who know the ancient wisdom and had it passed down onto them.”

‘‘Umthwalo is a label about those projects to rehabilitate African identity, wisdom, and knowledge – including Medicine, and make it live after us. I need to dig deeper into the Why of things, because many situations we are facing now find explanations back in our history that carry painful and even dark memories and unless we shed light onto those ugly parts, we cannot heal from our collective traumas and contemporary malfunctioning ways.”

Umthwalo, The Bag Line up

‘‘What I have made come true under the label Umthwalo so far is the bag line up. I own this skill from my beloved Mother. Aside from her work, she was a tailor and used to sew things for her relatives and business as well. But interestingly, she never wanted me to sew, though she knew I liked that, I would stand there staring at her sew, I would read her books to learn more on sewing. My mother would want me to go to school to get the highest degree possible and succeed in life thanks to my long studies. Well, this argument proved not strong enough to make my fascination for sewing fade away afterward, I was so stubborn. So I began to sew things with the needle, for my bobbies and stuff. And when I figured out how Mum was using her machine, well that was the end of everything. I was like playing the cat and the mouse with her: when she was out I would jump straight onto the machine, trying to make it work, trying to understand it and so. I finally figured out that everything is in the cut when it comes to sewing.”

“A few months before her death, she finally gave in and began to teach me some things about sewing.”

‘‘Before I figure that out, God only knows how many fabrics I wasted out of ignorance of the technique and believe me I have had a hard time for that with Mum. Once she would find out the mess I had done, she would yell at me like hell, but I never backed down, I kept on keeping on over years until I made it. A few months before her death, she finally gave in and began to teach me some things about sewing.”

‘‘I sewed my first bag after Mum’s death. I was trying to hang on something that was related to her, so I just took a former bag and I unfastened it to make a new one. Well it was so messy, yet I was so proud of myself, it was my first bag.”

‘‘Getting dramatically better at making bags, my father began to question himself, wondering if they didn’t make a mistake about their choice on what they made me study at school. My first dream was to become a Surgeon. But I went to the Environmental studies school, I loved the experience, it was practical and dynamic. But the thing is I didn’t see myself doing that kind of stuff, you need no creative skills to do that, I am an artist, I want to do everything that you do with the Heart, like Music, drawing, and on and on.”

‘‘At 19 I decided to start out a business with my bags, so I sought to surround myself with people from all the different backgrounds and skill sets necessary to launch my venture. But things didn’t work back in the time for many reasons, so I moved on and now I am onto it again and the weather is better. Now I am growing up my products line up, I am getting orders from people. So far, I mostly sell my bags by word of mouth, though last year I did a showroom right here at the University. Well, a social media page for the business is coming shortly.”

Too Passionate to Outsource

‘‘The bags are already available, maybe not in quantity because I’m still going to school and I don’t have the means or the necessary support to make my bags on an industrial scale. But before everything else I do them by myself because I want to infuse my spirit into each of my bags, I want each of my creations to have a piece of me.”

‘‘Well, that’s why maybe I’m not so good at business, because I put my heart in everything I do. I don’t like to subcontract my things to people because even if I give you the model, maybe you’ll do it but I won’t be satisfied as when I do it on my own, even if it’s not perfect. I do attach myself to each of my bags that at the end I happen not willing to hand over the product to the client (laughs)”

PHILOSOPHY AND PERSPECTIVES

‘‘My favorite say is ‘’you’re the master of your legend.’’

‘‘If I were to advise people, I would tell them to take their time to live – just live your life and don’t look at others’ lives. Everyone has his/her rhythm and his/her own adventures to go to, maybe it would be hard from your point of view because you can’t know if it's harder or better than the others’ lives. But just know you only have one life and you have to live it just as you want. This can take time to make your craziest dreams come true and maybe you won’t have much time left to ultimately enjoy it, but the point is to live it at your best, whatsoever. Find out how to make things work, even if things are not going right. Never give up. It would be hard but find help, there would be always someone to help you, but help yourself first, it’s only that way you can get helped. I struggle to live by that principle too.’’

‘‘There are psychological issues like depression and stuff that people are going through but don’t take it seriously here, then they find their selves involved in alcohol, drugs, overwork only to run away from their unease. People would just say those depressive minds are weak when they actually needed help but didn’t know how to get that help. I want to be of any help to support those people, and that’s why my music would be dedicated to them.’’

A Last Note In Music!

‘‘If something catches my attention in a song, I will just give it a listen... Music is a Universal Language!’’

‘‘I don’t have a favorite type of music. Though I am a fan of Alternative Rock, which is something mixed with Pop. People like Evanescence, Linkin Park. If something catches my attention in a song, I will just give it a listen, whatever the language. I have a friend in Russia, he made me love Russian music, it doesn’t depend on what they are saying: Music is a Universal Language! It’s closer to emotions. So I can’t quite stick myself to a specific type of music.’’

Wow, You made it through to here, Congrats ! Thank you for your time and your interest in my work. I hope you're leaving this place with nothing but a lot of inspirational vibes and tons of insights! So while I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year 2020, stay tuned for more original stories to come. And like we say in French : Au Revoir !