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Ambasse bey (also spelled ambas-i-bay) is a lively folk music-and-dance style from Cameroon, traditionally linked to the Yabassi people and the coastal area around Ambas Bay. The music is typically led by guitar—often acoustic or lightly amplified—while percussion is supplied with readily available objects such as sticks, bottles, handclaps, and small shakers. Its grooves are brisk and buoyant, generally faster-paced than assiko, and are propelled by syncopated off-beats that invite call-and-response singing. Dance is integral: performers use agile hip, shoulder, and torso movements, sometimes evoking paddling gestures associated with coastal life. Lyrics are often in Duala (and other local languages) as well as French, focusing on everyday stories, social commentary, romance, and communal celebration.

African folk music is an umbrella term for traditional, community-rooted musical practices across the African continent. It is characterized by cyclical structures, call-and-response singing, polyrhythms, and a strong integration of music with dance, storytelling, and ritual. Typical sound worlds include interlocking drum ensembles, handclaps, and idiophones; modal and pentatonic melodies; and timbral techniques such as ululation, vocal hocketing, and overtone-rich instrumental playing. Core instruments vary by region (e.g., West African kora, ngoni, balafon, and talking drum; Southern African mbira and marimba; East African lyres and fiddles; North African frame drums and lutes), but all are used to create layered textures that support social functions—work songs, praise singing, weddings, funerals, and rites of passage. Because it is transmitted orally, African folk music is fluid and adaptive, preserving deep historical memory while continually reinterpreting styles in response to migration, trade, and religious interchange.