Emanating from the tiny French island La Réunion, nestled some 500 miles off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, maloya dates back to the 17th century. Made by the slaves working the island’s sugar plantations, the music only began to be recognized by Réunionese society in the 20th century. But in the 1960s, a turn towards pro-independence and communist lyrics—not to mention its use in trance-inducing servis kabaré ceremonies, which the Catholic Church disapproved of—led to the prohibition of the style. When it emerged again in the 1980s, acts like Ziskanan and Ti Fock presented a more digestible iteration of that sound, which got picked up by western labels. But in the 21st century, artists like Christine Salem and Danyèl Waro have broadened the appeal of maloya, while Jako Maron has used modular synths and drum machines to both modernize and scuff up the form, stripping it back to its spiky, percussive essence. Maron’s 2018 tape for Uganda’s Nyege Nyege label helped spread greater awareness of maloya far from the island.
Maron appears three times on Digital Kabar: Electronic Maloya From La Réunion Since 1980, a wide-ranging 18-track set of older material and exclusive tracks that shows just how technology has altered the traditional sound of the island. Previously released on The Electro Maloya Experiments of Jako Maron, “Batbaté Maloya” strikes a midway point between Pan Sonic and charming drum-machine sputters, the ancillary buzz slowly throwing a pall over the entire track. As a producer for the hip-hop group Force Indigène, Maron blends together twanging strings and squalls of feedback. And his remix of drummer Patrick Manent’s “Kabaré Atèr” is as spare as can be. Rooting the mix in vocal chants and relentless drums, he brusquely chops and loops the vocals into a jostling call-and-response, with a menacing dose of acid bass infiltrating the threshing rhythms of the hand percussion. Rather than intensify and add layers, at the midway point, Maron cuts the electronics out, leaving the drums and voice to tussle, a rare instance of a remixer extracting themselves from the music.
Elsewhere, the set shows a plethora of artists moving away from the template, showing how the music naturally mutates the further it roams. In Berlin, the shakers and synth bass underpinning Alex Barck’s rework of Christine Salem’s “Oh Africa” percolate and carefully build to sweet dancefloor dopamine release. Barck, a member of Germany’s Sonar Kollektiv, is wise to foreground the evocative grain of Salem’s voice rather than overpower it with his own programming. Same with the stirring remix of Maya Kamaty’s “Pandiyé,” adding tumbling hand drums and her layered vocals until it achieves liftoff.
Such reworkings of maloya don’t always fare so well. Do Moon’s update of Ti Fock’s 1985 track “Kom Lé Long” veers dangerously close to breezy house tropes, mixing marimba and kick drum until the vocals feel like an afterthought. The loungey downtempo dub of “Mahavel” comes across as velvety wallpaper, while Boogzbrown & Cubenx’s hectic “Butcha” gets shot through with a ludicrous array of laser effects, as if hunting for the birds chirping throughout the track. La Réunion’s indigenous feathered species are better served on L’abuse’s “Ré-Union.” The expansive centerpiece of the set, it’s a gently cresting slice of 124-bpm ambient house, the bird calls and handclaps judiciously mixed with wordless vocals and piano. Fragrant as it is, the track unceremoniously cuts out after 13 minutes.
In the clash of traditional and futuristic, ancestral and electronic, Kabar brings to mind heady fusions like Shangaan electro, gqom, and batida that are sprouting up across the African continent and diaspora. Too often on this compilation, though, the remixers risk drowning out maloya’s fiery, vital message. As the singer Firmin Viry once said, “It is the cry of the people.”
