Salatiel

As a teenager, Salatiel feeds on music to protect himself from the adversity and difficulties of life. Being far from his family’s house and influence while filling the need of a good education and academic studies elsewhere, music became his refuge, his lifeline and his favorite means of expression. The musician he is today owes a lot to the young boy who used to hang out in the streets of his native region of the South-West to soak in very diverse sounds and rhythms.
Salatiel's musical journey began in his early teenage years, when he turned to music as a means of coping with life's challenges and adversities. As he left home to study in the Anglophone school system, music became his primary means of expression and his true refuge. The musician he is today owes a great tribute to his younger age, when he roamed the streets of the South-West, his native region, discovering a wide variety of sounds and rhythms.
Brought up by a very religious mother with a natural gift for singing, Salatiel drew part of his inspiration from the source of gospel, especially from artists of the American label “Integrity Music”, famous for its worship music. His musical upbringing began with an introduction to the piano by one of his older brothers. He improved on his own by memorising songs and playing them on a virtual piano drawn on his school desk.
At the age of 17, Salatiel suffered a major disappointment when his parents forbade him to play the family piano as a punishment for neglecting his studies. This period, though painful, proved crucial to his development as a musician, as he wrote several of his songs during this period. In 2007, he enrolled at the University of Buea, while at the same time taking an active part in religious music in the region. Shortly afterwards, he began a career as a studio musician and producer. Although he obtained his bachelor's degree in animal biology in 2011, Salatiel chose to abandon his academic career to devote himself fully to his passion for music. He made himself known with Hitsongs like "Ca se passe ici" (2016), "Toi et Moi" (2017), "Anita" (2019), "Good Girl" (2021) or "Closer" (2023).
Having worked with a variety of musical backgrounds, including gospel, folklore from south-west Cameroon, bikutsi, makossa, Assiko, Esewe, R&B and hip-hop, Salatiel has developed an exceptional ability to blend sounds and rhythms. He brings a 'new school' touch to 'old school' makossa by mixing coupé-décalé, afrobeat and traditional rhythms. An example of this fusion is the song "Closer" (2023) with Charlotte Dipanda, which blends traditional Sawa rhythms from the Littoral region with a soft modern Afrobeat melody.
In his two albums, Salatiel shows the versatility and energy that music can produce in him. He combines afrobeat with rock (Africa Represented), modern reggae rhythms, amapiano and violins that enrich the afropop rhythm in his most recent album, 'Family Man'. This variation is not limited...