K-Tino


K-Tino is a Cameroonian singer who shot to fame in her home country with her energetic bikutsi music.
Bikutsi music is characterized by an up-tempo 6/8 rhythm, danced with energetic pulsations of shoulders and/or pelvis. For more than ten years now, K-Tino has been one of the main exponents of bikutsi. Her lyrics are quite explicit, although she herself denies that she is vulgar, saying " I am not vulgar, I do not make vulgar spectacles. If I am vulgar, then the Ewondo language is vulgar." A key to bikutsi is the subtlety of the sexual content, which is hidden by changing non-vulgar words very slightly in the Ewondo language. The media dubbed K-Tino as "femme du peuple," "mama bonheur," and "mama la joie." K-Tino began singing in Chacal and Escalier Bar, later joining the band Les Zombies de la Capitale.
In early 2014 K-tino stated that she has stopped doing obscene music and has now given her life to god. She is starting a church called Celestial City in the Gabonese capital.
K-Tino's daughter, K-Wash, is also a bikutsi performer.

Reception

Some member of the press were critical of the sexual nature of the lyrics, including a writer for the newspaper Mutations who said, ""Cameroon has exhibited a looseness of morals unprecedented. The debauchery and the sexual perversions are of the most immoral, and affect everyone. Sex, of the most vulgar manner, is more and more present in the media and the public, marked by eccentric, indecent clothing intended to provoke sensual pleasure, nudity, and sensuality."