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René Lacaille
Mapou (Riverboat Records)

René Lacaille, the notable accordionist from La Réunion in the Indian Ocean, returns in 2004 with another remarkably rootsy yet innovative recording of music from this little-heard-from corner of the world. Again intergrating African, Indian, Madagascan and European rhythms and instruments, Lacaille shows great skill but more importantly, great soul. While most fo the recording is solid roots-folk, the band does occasionally wander into some outside jazz territory, showing that having roots doesn't necssarily mean living underground and out of reach of the modern world.

The artist says:
René Lacaille is the musical embodiment of the unique Creole culture of the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion, incorporating African, Indian, Madagascan and European rhythms and instruments. On the album Mapou, this remarkable singer, accordion player, guitarist and extraordinary songster tells the story of his troubadour life, which highlights the evolution of the music of La Réunion and features (among others) the fascinating styles of séga and maloya.

Mapou is a type of sugarcane, and for the people of La Réunion it is the ultimate cane, representing something sweet, smooth and sugary. It is highly perfumed and easy to eat – one bite is enough to break a piece of it, and it is delicious!

A wild island lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean, La Réunion emerged as an empty, harsh landmass. With no natural port, the island is difficult to access and is far away from the other Mascarene Islands and even further from Madagascar, India and Africa, not to mention France. In the days of sailing ships, it took three months to get there from France; then a month once the Suez Canal was built; a week at the beginning of commercial aviation; and now, finally, a day.

The first people to have gone to the island were Moslem navigators (who had put it on a map and named it in Arabic) and the Chinese. Neither the Moslem navigators, nor the Chinese, nor the Portuguese, who rediscovered it in 1507 and 1520, nor the English or Dutch, settled there. The island was deserted – a paradise for dodos and turtles.

The French only took possession of the island 130 years later, but this populating was slow and isolated. They were more interested in India and Madagascar, despite life being more severe there. They made La Réunion into a place of deportation for Malagasy (Madagascan) mutineers, who lived better there anyway (no fevers, no malaria, no dangerous animals…), and some of them decided to stay.

The first men to set up there, in 1663, were two French and seven Malagasy men, along with three Malagasy women… The Malagasy took to the mountains. The first children to be born on the island were born to these women, but who were the fathers? No doubt this is the point when people started to have children with people of other races, combined with the fact that a number of impoverished whites, poor white settlers, gradually mixed with slaves or freed slaves (who already made up a mixed population) – West as well as East Africans, Malagasy, south Indians, a number of Asians. There were 30,000 inhabitants in 1767, of which 22,000 were slaves.

The population consisted of mariners from around the world, often returning illegally from banishment, sailors, corsairs and pirates, soldiers, colonists come to try their luck, Africans and Malagasy brought as slaves, then there were others bound by contract to take the place of the slaves once the slave trade ceased. Between 1840 and 1870, this ‘enlistment’ brought nearly 150,000 people, whereas there were only 100,000 inhabitants on the island at the time, two-thirds of whom were slaves freed in 1848. The big landowners had nothing else to do but hire the freed slaves, though French citizens, and sent for these hired hands, who enriched the palette of the Réunion Island people but also brought terrible diseases. The first enlisted folk were East Africans and Madagascans (30,000), then there were Indians (120,000), then more Madagascans, people from Rodrigues (East Mauritius), and this only takes us up to 1934!

This population influx reinforced the interracial mixing that already existed, and brought more interracial relationships, cooking, religion – the Indians built the first Malabar temple on a French territory… A new immigration, this time of the free variety, started in 1880: Chinese from the Canton region came to trade, and also Indo-Moslems. They built the first mosque and Chinese temples on La Réunion.

The island has experienced terrible times, particularly after the 1865 sugar crisis, which went on until the 1950s despite a slight improvement between 1920 and World War II. One could say the state of the population, plus misery, malnutrition and infant mortality, all put the island on a par with the poorest countries in the Third World. Things started to change after World War II, very slowly, and I grew up on this island that is at the same time poor – very poor – and rich with its people who have overcome all this. Like other Réunion Creoles, I am a descendant of white colonists, African or Madagascan slaves, perhaps also from Indians (and also Chinese) who came under contract.

I think La Réunion is still cut off. The island continues to have difficulties because of this distance, because of this history, the traces it left, consequences of choices made in the past, and because of unemployment (currently forty per cent of the active population). But its relative estrangement is perhaps also its fortune. It is up to the island to seize this opportunity.

The populations merged and, more and more over the course of time, gave birth to a unique Creole culture and to types of music that reflected all these origins. The séga mixes African and European rhythms with instruments from Europe, the maloya chant of slaves, of labour, toil, sorrow and also revolt, which was banned for a long time, even in the twentieth century, along with solo percussion. The big names of maloya are Firmin Viry, the Rwa Kaf, Gramoune Lélé, Françoise Guimbert, and particularly Danyèl Waro, with whom I have played many times and who played on my album Patanpo. He is someone whose way of looking at things on La Réunion I admire greatly. Then there is the Réunion quadrille, and many other dances coming from all around the world. The instruments also reflect the mixture of cultures and the African, Indian, Madagascan and European influences. All these can be found on this album.

This album reflects all the influences that are my own personal influences, and it also reflects my history. I wanted to play some standards that literally made my flesh quiver and made me want to play music like séga and maloya, among others, as well as all the other world musics. On La Réunion, before the advent of the aeroplane, boats arrived carrying sailors from all round the world, so each time someone landed on the island it was the modern songs that arrived, by word of mouth (there were no records at this time). Often, one only knew part of song because that bit was the easiest to remember.

The album starts with ‘Madina’ because, for me, it evokes both waking up to the radio and my own awakening to music, when I was a child. I played alongside my father from the age of 7, playing music for dancing to at funfairs, weddings and balls. We would do them all: séga, maloya, bolero, tango, cha-cha-cha, baïan, samba, paso doble, calypso, waltzes, mazurka, quadrille, and more.

It is because of this that I have performed with so many different musicians, such as Yuri Buenaventura, Ray Léma, Manu Dibango, Jacques Higelin – whom I like a great deal – Bob Brozman, Debashish Bhattacharya, Raúl Barboza, Antonio Rivas, and so many others I could not possibly name them all individually.

Now, when I compose music, I have many elements in my head and at my fingertips. Every morning I question myself. I have a great deal of practical experience, I love music with a passion, have a thirst for harmony and for beautiful phrasing. I love whatever I sing, what is simple to capture. For this album I have explored the musical horizon – with its traditional themes and compositions – from all angles.