Malagasy Pop

The island of Madagascar split away from the east coast of Africa more than 120 million years ago and evolved its own unique flora and fauna in quiet isolation from the rest of the world. Today the island's music is equally unique, following its own evolutionary path—but decidedly not isolated and anything but quiet. The Malagasy people and language originated in Malaysia and emigrated to Madagascar 2,000 years ago. There, the immigrants slowly mixed with their African counterparts over the centuries. Malagasy music, too, bears this mixed heritage as well as many of the other musical influences (especially European and Arabic) that drifted in on the Indian Ocean trade routes throughout the years. While the traditional and folkloric music of Madagascar retains the strongest connections to Malaysia, Malagasy pop, strongly influenced by the radio signals of its neighbors, bears a heavier East African stamp.

Salegy is the best-known and most widely exported dance pop music of Madagascar. It began in northern coastal towns like Majunga, Nosy Be and Diego Suarez (Antsiranana). Salegy is driving, 12/8 music with clear affinities to mainland pop styles in places like Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It is characterized by gently rippling guitar work, organ or keyboards and sometimes accordion as well as powerful vocal harmonies.

The style originated with Malagasy folk songs, often sung during moonlight feasts. But as in the birth sagas of so many 20th century roots-pop styles, pioneering musicians also needed to get an education in foreign music. As international pop styles and music technology —guitars, etc— seeped into this remote, local scene, salegy pop emerged, and was being widely recorded by the 1950s and '60s. It evolved to feature rich, harmonized vocals and chiming guitar lines locked, restless, animated 12/8 rhythms. There is also a calmer, more romantic genre of the music, known as malesa.

Another style, tsapika can be thought of as heavily caffeinated Malagasy country music. Since the 1980s, as salegy music has earned the respect of the recording industry in Antananarivo, this fast, rowdy dance-pop genre has developed in beach-side towns and mining camps in the poor, neglected south of Madagascar. Some say that tsapika is so fast because people in that region talk fast. One northerner explained the genre's speediness as a reflection of the fast footwork young Bara men must master in order to start a family—Bara tradition originally required that a boy steal a zebu, a curved horned cow, in order to marry.
What is sure is that tsapika is electric guitar pop-boogie that has origins in the traditional kabosy bands that fire through the night in villages across southern Madagascar and also in South African pop music, which can be heard on the radio in southwest coastal towns like Tulear. The South African influence is expressed in the music's stomping, 4/4 groove, its use of swelling organ parts—as well as that woozy keyboard sound popularized by South African reggae man Lucky Dube—and in the genre's favoring of shrill, female vocals that are rather like the backing vocals found in Shangaan pop by artists like Obed Ngobeni and the Kurhula Sisters.

Central in every tsapika band is one electric guitarist finger-picking madly. The strings are plucked with thumb and forefinger only and the playing has a maniacal start-and-stop quality. A tsapika guitarist may hang out in silence for awhile and then race in with a ferocious and distinctly Malagasy cluster of notes. Guitarists like Jean-Noel, Bloko and Said Alexis are local legends, and their groups are in high demand at the sapphire mining camps and other rural work camps where people have money, time on their hands, pent-up energy and nowhere to go.

In recent years, there's been a popular revival of Malagasy folk music, led by the group Tarika, who combine the styles and instruments of many tribes with forceful, often political songwriting. Tarika's charismatic lead singer, Hanitra Rasoanaivo, is also the founder of the Antshow Cultrual Center, established to promote Malagasy arts and artists. One of the center's most successful efforts was 2003's Vakoka project, which brought together 13 of Madagascar's most talented musicians for a historic recording session that celebrated Malagasy pop's diverse roots, while pushing the music in new directions. – Banning Eyre, Courtesy Afropop Worldwide: www.afropop.org