Omer Ntougou Ndoutoume

Mvett Omer Ntougou Ndoutoume

Mvett designates both a stringed musical instrument, the player and the epics developed there, from which a whole literature emerges. The word Mvett in its broadest sense reflects the Ekang culture. Revealed during the exodus of the Ekang people (Beti-Fang-Bulu - the Ekang people are today scattered between Gabon, Cameroon, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and on the island of São Tomé.), Mvett songs were sung to the fighters to excite them before the battles. Beyond this use, the art of Mvett encompasses all aspects of Ekang culture: poetry, philosophy or scientific knowledge of the world. It evokes the power of man as the driving force of life, without which the world would be an imperfect work. After the publication of his first book on the Mvett (Du Mvett: La généalogie du silence. Book 1: From Tsira Ndong Ndoutoume to Daniel Assoumou Ndoutoume or the tragedy of the smugglers. Paris, Ed Atramenta, July 2019), in which he revealed his genetic and genealogical link with the sacred art of Mvett, Omer Ntougou Ndoutoume comes back to us with an even bolder project. This time he takes us into an epic told in the purest tradition of the Mvett, while scrupulously respecting the related cartography (culture, cosmology, spirituality, geography of the worlds, identity of the characters, logic of progression of the story). Through the journey of Esebe Ella, chief of the strange Esameki Tribe, who will raise an incredible army around his daughter Abendang Mbeng Esebe to fight Engong in order to take away the secret of immortality, the author plunges us into the heart of the complex fight between matter and immatites. In a beautifully written work, whose style is somewhere between the sharp pen of Tsira Ndong Ndoutoume and the sometimes sarcastic humour of Daniel Assoumou Ndoutoume, he delights us with the imagination in which he immerses us and the lessons we learn from it ourselves. This war will lead each of the warring sides to draw on unsuspected resources to win formidable battles and try to overcome them.