This Reunion Island band makes music from sugarcane flowers and whiskey barrels

When Tiloun Ramoune took to the stage at the Jodhpur RIFF festival, he was following Shubha Mudgal’s soulful performance. What commenced, however, was quite the contrast to Mudgal’s slow, eloquent music. Almost every single person in the audience rushed to the stage, swaying to the beats of Tiloun’s kayamb, and the accompanying beating of the pikèr and roulèr – as though caught in a frenzy. The repetitive lines in Réunion Creole that formed the lyrics were soon being shouted by the dancers. Tiloun’s baritone rose above the din in a hypnotic chant. Their skin slicked with sweat, the musicians dashed off the stage to stand among the frenzied crowd as they all sang and danced together to music that they only perhaps half understood. Only the power of a song can create such a spectacle.

The collective, hailing from the tiny cluster of the Reunion Islands in the Indian Ocean, left the stage to the tumultuous applause and pleas for more.

Sitting in the media centre after his performance, Tiloun resembled the quintessential jovial neighbourhood uncle with laughing eyes and a story to tell. “Maloya music is the music of the slaves,” he explains, in Réunion Creole, that manages not to get completely lost in translation, when the interpreter, also from Reunion Island, conveys it. “The instruments were thus made from daily items in our lives that usually get thrown away. The kayamb is made from sugarcane flower and seeds from a local flower called conflore. The big drum or roulèr is made from wine and whiskey barrels, then lined with the hide of goats. The pikèr is just a hollow bamboo that’s hit with sticks. And the sati drum adds an element of musicality with its steel plates and bamboo.”

The trans-like state of the crowd is also something that is common of the Maloya music, which has been often compared with African music and the blues. “We use Maloya in Malagase and African ceremonies to call upon ancestors. We start at 6am and continue for 24 hours. The music goes on continuously, with people taking turns to play,” says Tiloun, who picked up the kayamb playing at these festivals. “After a point, it’s like a trance, a spiritual experience.”

However, Maloya is not just the Réunion Creole brush with spirituality. It is also one of the most politically charged musical genres in the world. Such a threat did the music pose to the rulers of this French department, that they banned it in the 1970s and only lifted it in the early 90s. The songs use a call-response structure and were used by the local population to send secret messages and create political satires that the French found unintelligible.

“My own kayamb was gifted to me by Firmin Viry, who created some of the earliest protest songs in Maloya,” says Tiloun, who adds that the 83-year-old singer, who had fought for the rights of the sugarcane cutters and for the lifting of the Maloya ban, has been a source of inspiration over the years. “One of the songs I sang was my own rendition of his song, my homage to him.”

Tiloun’s own songs are not just limited to politics but also extends to “la mort, la vie, amour and haine” (death, life, love and hate).

An interesting aspect of the Reunion Islands is its amalgamation of French, Indian and African cultures. As such, one often finds Indian masala in the food, Malagasy, Hindi, Portuguese, Gujarati and Tamil in their language, and Indian instruments like the tabla in their musical repertoire. “We are all connected,” says Tiloun. “It is only that we interpret it in our own way.”