Ti Moris

Like Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles, La Réunion was settled by Africans, Asians, and Europeans. Until the mid-seventeenth century, the island was completely uninhabited. Only then did French colonizers bring enslaved people from Asia (mainly India), Madagascar, and East Africa to work on plantations growing vanilla and sugar cane. These differentiated  origins gave rise to a unique culture and music in particular absorbed various influences that resulted in maloya, a tradition of music and dance that exists only on La Réunion. Maloya incorporates its own repertoire of stories about work and struggle, repression and longing, as well as distinctive percussion instruments, especially the rouler, a single-skinned cylindrical drum, and the kayamb, a large raft rattle made of sugar cane filled with seeds. Due to its origins in the sugar plantations, maloya has often been compared with the blues, a music  originating from enslaved cotton pickers in the US. From the 1960s until the 1980s, the music was even suppressed by the colonial French authorities because they suspected its rebellious potential. It was rediscovered in the 1970s by Danyèl Waro, who popularized it and became a prominent figure in maloya culture. Waro’s group also featured Ti Moris, who is now a guardian of the maloya tradition himself, acting as a link between ancestors and today’s audience. He views this music as a family affair—many of his relatives play in his group, singing the songs of their ancestors and creating a connection between memory and hope, tradition and innovation. This is their first concert in Germany.

 

Mokoomba

Mokoomba is a six-strong Afro-fusion band from Zimbabwe. In the course of their twenty-year career, Mokoomba have played major festivals throughout Europe, Africa, and the US. The band’s six musicians all come from Victoria Falls, a city in Zimbabwe close to the border with Zambia that is home to the world’s largest waterfall on the Zambezi River. The waterfall is known in the Lozi language as Mosi-oa-Tunya, a name that describes  ‘a smoke that thunders on account of the waterfall’s rising mist that can be seen from up to thirty kilometres away. This natural spectacle draws visitors from around the world, who bring their music with them. Thanks to this influx of visitors, the six young friends who would later form Mokoomba came into contact with music not only from neighbouring Zambia but internationally, using these influences to create their unmistakable mix of Zimbabwean rhythms, Afrobeat, and rock. Their first album Kweseka was released in 2009 and their breakthrough came in 2012 with the album Rising Tide, produced by Manou Gallo.