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27th June, 2010
Fans worldwide gathered Friday to mark the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death but in Libreville there is a permanent shrine to the pop icon in the home of Gabon’s own version of the star.
“I owe him so much,” said Jean “Michael” Anicet Ngadi, 34, a performer who was declared “Gabon’s Michael Jackson” at a 2002 lookalike contest and since become a national sensation.
“Michael is part of my life, every day,” he said in his family home in suburb PK10 where he held a traditional wake, in accordance with custom, after Jackson’s shock death from a drug overdose last June 25.
“The pain I felt, it is indescribable. All I know is that I cried over Michael Jackson for nearly a month,” he said.
Posters of his idol plaster the doors, the star’s photo hangs next to his father’s in the living room, and his cell phone rings with a Jackson hit.
Ngadi’s dance troupe has two shows planned in honour of Jackson, one in Libreville in January and the other in the southeastern city of Franceville in February.
“I even have him to thank for my job,” said Ngadi who was given a local government position after the mayor was captivated by his Jackson routine at an election rally.
It all started in 1992 on Jackson’s high profile trip to Africa.
The pop idol landed in this west African state to be met by tens of thousands of screaming fans and a banner proclaiming: “Welcome Home Michael”.
“I was in high school, I skipped classes to go see him at the airport,” said Ngadi. “Like many kids my age, I adored Michael Jackson: the way he moved, his gestures, his look, everything.”
“I decided to imitate him,” he said.
After graduating, Ngadi threw himself into dance “out of pleasure and fanaticism” but to the consternation of his parents in a country where a self-taught professional male dancer is not held in high regard.
In 1993, “I began dancing in front of people. A real audience of people,” Ngadi recalled.
“It was my first time… It was such a great success. I told myself: ‘OK, maybe the flame has been lit, the flame that was embedded in me.’”
And there was more success. Ngadi, who also teaches dance, now has his own company, the “Michael Anicet troupe”, which counts 20 other Jackson fanatics, including a soldier and a construction worker.
On stage Ngadi “becomes” Michael Jackson, with an array of wigs and costumes to trace his icon’s career in frighteningly faithful renditions.
His next dream is to make dance lessons—including Jackson routines—obligatory in Gabon’s school.
He has already passed on his passion to one of his nephews, 13-year-old Scott “Jackson”, who can compete with his uncle on hits that more than twice his own age.
If Ngadi’s bid to bring dance to schools doesn’t work, “I’m not worried, my successor is here,” he said of Scott.
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