If you love the music of Bobby McFerrin and you don’t know about Gino Sitson, you really need to listen to his recordings. The Cameroonian vocalist, percussionist and composer has a similar style and has been exploring the worlds of jazz, classical, Cameroonian music and pop using his voice and body percussion to create a dazzling array of musical sounds.

On Voistrings, Gino Sitson combines vocals, onomatopoeian sounds and percussion with a small string ensemble composed of viola and cello, crossing the borders of jazz and classical music. Sitson indicates that he loves many styles of music and when he was composing Voistrings, he originally wanted it to be just his voice and strings. Eventually, he decided to include his full band, adding bass, drums and piano.

Sitson was born in Cameroon in a musical family. His mother was a vocalist and choir director, and his family comes from the musical line known as ‘Ntontas,’ or players of horns. As he grew in a city, he listened to a wide range of music, ranging from Cameroonian music to blues, jazz and classical music recordings. Sitson moved to Paris to the United States, although he travels frequently to Paris to complete a Ph.D. in musicology at the Sorbonne.