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 Tarika Soul Makassar Triloka (www.triloka.com)
Around 1500 years ago, some historians believe, a hardy group of seafarers sailed out of Indonesia in out-rigger canoes and ended up thousands of miles away, on an island off the coast of Africa now known as Madagascar. In September, 1999, Tarika's lead singer and composer, Hanitra Rasoanaivo, embarked upon an equivalent voyage of discovery, but in reverse, traveling from Madagascar to Indonesia. She spent a month on the isle of Sulawesi as a pilgrim among the Makassar, Bugis and Torajan peoples, searching for her ancestral Malayo-Polynesian roots. It soon became clear that, despite the long sundering and much of the population's lack of interest in their native arts and history, the two groups still shared strikingly similar religious beliefs, superstitions, funerary customs, languages, types of attire and musical instruments.
Hanitra shares her epiphanies throughout Tarika's latest album, Soul Makassar, and even brought her London production team to Indonesia to record with local musicians. Appropriately enough, given Madagascar's Polynesian/African heritage, the title refers to both the Makassar of Sulawesi, and the Cameroonian maestro Manu Dibango's seventies hit, "Soul Makossa." The songs also reflect this duality, as island-born Indonesian and Malagasy traditions mix it up with grooves from the African continent and diaspora. Soft-edged zouk from the French Caribbean flirts with playful and deceptively facile Congolese rumba. Deep-throated Zulu jive chants rise from the depths and soar high, while macho Afrobeat bass lines are sometimes doubled with Senegalese talking drums. However, the Polynesian sources hold their own, and what could have been a foolhardy if natural juxtaposition of influences is knit together by Hanitra's hard-won and confident self-awareness.
(p) ©2001 Triloka / Rogue Productions |
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