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Introducing Vakoka
$11.99

"...rush to investigate this CD with ears wide open." - Rick Sanders, fROOTS

Vakoka brings together thirteen of Madagascar’s most talented musicians to explore diverse traditions and push the boundaries of Malagasy music, led by Seta Ramaroson and Hanitra (founding member and leader of Tarika). Over a six-week period this ‘all-star’ cast from around the country worked together to create a record that showcases the island’s incredibly diverse musical and cultural heritage. The resulting songs carry the joy and emotion of a remarkable group as they explore each other’s musical traditions, blending the old and new in a way rarely heard – on this island or any other.

Listen:
Salama
Vorondolo
Lazao

"In fact, [Hanitra Rasoanaivo] carries her musical expression with serious cultural and educational intent. Tarika's Son Egal album, for example, was a work researching popular history, looking into the colonial French use of West African troops to put down a Malagasy uprising in 1947, casting light in previously murky corners. Soul Makassar was also ambitious. You can hear echoes of Indonesia and Polynesia in fast-strummed Malagasy rhythms, the flavour of the vocal harmonies, a certain sing-song effect. Hanitra, following the thread, went roots-hunting on the other side of the Indian Ocean to Sulawesi where she found ancient stories and people "who look like us, eat like us, have beliefs like us, thousands of miles away". The story is on the CD. Now she has set up a cultural centre in Madagascar called Antshow, a place for the band to play and write, also a local resource. Its first ripe fruit is a remarkable summit meeting, a collaboration dreamed up and produced by a Canadian, Sean Whittaker, to make an original compendium of Malagasy music with Hanitra and a dozen of Madagascar's leading musicians and composers. Over a six-week period these people, mostly unknown to each other, created a complete work - a little bit here, a little bit there - a sophisticated but organic assemblage of the island's musical identities, and it sounds glorious. There's creativity and fire in abundance, a great sense of fun and delight by the participants, it's especially well-recorded, and holds surprises too. Highlights the sax and flute of Seta Ramaroson is just lovely, a model of discretion, class and soul throughout; the speed and general grunt in particular of the Dame Ihaova track, with a lovely falling-away riff reminiscent of Zambian kalindula, is pure exhilaration, stratospheric. The next track, a warm and beguiling almost-Brazilian samba, turns out in fact to be a guitar style from the Malagasy mountains. All the way through the CD there's contrast more attack than I expected, more repose too. Even if you know something of Malagasy music, rush to investigate this CD with ears wide open. It may catch you right where it counts. - Rick Sanders, fROOTS

Press from the record label:
In April 2003, thirteen of Madagascar’s most talented musicians gathered in the capital city Antananarivo to create an altogether new kind of recording – something that can only be described as a collaborative compilation. The musicians, from the north, south, east, west and central highland regions of the country, represented a cross-section of the island’s celebrated and amazingly varied musical heritage. Over a six-week period this ‘all-star’ cast worked in close collaboration to create and record songs that showcase the island’s incredibly diverse musical and cultural heritage. Introducing Vakoka is the result of this unique experiment. Its songs carry the joy and emotion of a remarkable group as they explore each other’s musical traditions, blending the old and new in a way rarely heard on this island – or any other. About Madagascar Madagascar is an island off the coast of Africa, east of Mozambique. Dwarfed by continental Africa, the seahorse-shaped island is larger than it appears – at 1600 km tip to tail it’s the fourth largest island in the world. Malayo/Polynesian travellers from far-off Indonesia originally settled the country about 1500 years ago, bringing with them African and Arabian influences drawn from their extensive travels. Since then Madagascar has absorbed other travellers and migrant populations from Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, becoming a sort of ‘floating cultural experiment’ as it slowly drifts its way across the Indian Ocean.