Madagascar has nearly three times the land area of Great Britain, and is the world’s fourth largest island, and the second-largest island country. It has eighteen tribal peoples and areas, and travel is still generally difficult and slow, so it’s not surprising that this huge, very musical country has a variety of distinctive local musics.

The form associated with the area of the south-west around the town of Toliara is a fast, spiky dance music known as tsapiky (pronounced “tsa-peek”). Played at celebrations and ceremonies such as weddings, funerals and circumcisions, it’s typically amplified through Tannoy-type grey-painted horns hung in the trees. This album, apart from one track, is recorded in that sort of situation, the sound taken from those tinny-sounding overdriven horns. (One such system, but playing records, kept me awake one long night, in a dead-bug-spattered bed, in a village somewhere en route in Madagascar. My room had a light switch whose purpose I couldn’t figure out, until I looked in the street and found it operated a red light outside my door!)

Once one’s accustomed to the sound, it’s exciting music. Fast, intricately skittering, distorted electric guitars with female vocalists akin, in energy and irresistible dance-impulsion, to rock’n’roll with the speed control turned up. The eight tracks of the album, four per vinyl side, feature seven popular bands, plus a rather sweet unaccompanied duet from Meny and Ando, the two singers from the band Rebona, a respite recorded not via the horns but at Meny’s home.

Further reading:
Berikely & Zama - Elaela
Damily - Early Years: Madagascar Cassette Archives
Razia - The Road

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