Translation of the article in Ivoire Dimanche # 771

Date of edition: November 17, 1985

John Simons A Message of Love.

John Simons was born on October 3 1956 in Douala ,Cameroon. He has just released his second Maxi 45 featuring the two titles: "Broken Heart" and " A Heart in Love ".

Don't be misled by this artist's "look". His well-groomed "dreadlocks" don't make of him an adept of reggae.To him, having braided hair is just a look like any other one. It is a way of being , of feeling great with himself. From this standpoint, he shares Yannick Noah's thought, the franco-cameroonian famous tennis player. It's a demystification of the dreadlocks. So, any one wearing dreadlocks is not necessarily a Rasta. The erudite of the Rastafarianism had warned us : the Rastas have natural hair, untrimmed, unbrushed. And for a good reason! They are the descendants of Abraham and the scriptures assert that the consecration of the Lord is upon them and that a blade should not come near any part of their crania.

John Simons -that's his name- plays Makossa as any good old Cameroonian. But unlike a Moni Bilé or a Sam Fan Thomas, he plays his in English and tries to fit it elsewhere: in the civilization of the universal. "My music, he says is a deep mutation between three elements: Anglo-Saxon music, African roots and a Latin feeling…a symbiosis of three stones". For sure, a challenge. A madness. For, how to convince all these people who think that Makossa should only wrap itself in the Cameroonian context?

In any case, in regard with the content, his message remains within the familiarities. The artist does not innovate. He sings love, just like any Joe. This feeling is cardinal. That's his conviction. To him, love is at the beginning and the end of everything. Of the struggle for welfare for instance. So, the song "A heart in Love" is a plead against the barriers of the skin color. " Love has no boundaries, he says. A heart in love is the same everywhere."

In "Broken Heart", he tells the story of a young lonesome man in search for a helping soul. A way of saying that we always need a little bit of love.

I the end, to John Simons the deal is to express to the best, his musical impulses. With no calculation. What's important is what one feels, what one wants to express. The artist has been living in Paris (France) for four years. He is attending l'Ecole Normale de Musique. It is there that he discovered, he says, "the great treasure of the Law of the Method applicable to Music".

Paulus.