40-year-old Cameroonian musician Blick Bassy has revealed how his life was transformed when Apple chose one of his songs, “Kiki,” for part of its iPhone 6 ad campaign.
Although the ad only includes a 15-second excerpt of the song, Bassy says the resulting exposure has been greater than anything he has experienced in his 20 year musical career.
Check out the ad below:
Bassy notes, “A friend of mine living in the U.S. called me and said, ‘I was watching NBA and during the adverts I heard your song in [the dialect of] Bassa. I told my wife, you won’t believe it, I’m hearing Bassa on TV in the U.S!'”
Since then, Blick Bassy says the iPhone 6 ad has earned him a concert in London, a U.S. tour in the making, and enormous success on French radio.
“The fact that Apple chose a song in Bassa is going to help young artists from Africa to accept what and who they are,” Bassy says. “It might also help people in Cameroon start teaching more of those languages.”
While Apple has certainly used plenty of big-name musical artists to promote its products over the years, it has also helped break new musical acts. This has been particularly important on Apple Music, where Apple’s focus on human curation has meant exposing listeners to artists they might not otherwise be familiar with.
As the star of just one short iPhone 6 ad, Bassy’s story may just be a footnote in Apple history, but I’ll never stop being amazed by how Apple has the ability to transform people’s lives through even the smallest of decisions.
You can find Blick Bassy’s new album on iTunes here.
Source: CNN
