Sakili Trio

Festive and inciting.

You’ve probably never heard of the island Rodrigues, home to the Sakili Trio. It’s a positively puny (less than ten by twenty kilometers) part of Mauritius. That probably sounds a little more familiar, but would you be able to point to it on a map? It’s in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about a thousand kilometers east of Madagaskar, not far from La Réunion. And that isn’t hard to hear. Both the drive of the maloya and Malagasy music’s beautiful polyphony shine through in Rodrigues’s sega tambour.

The sega, which is the foundation for this traditional music, is a mixture of African rhythms, transported by slaves, and those of European colonists, like polka, waltz, mazurka, and the beats of the Scottish.

The trio’s beating heart, master percussionist Francis Prosper, makes his fingers dance on the skin of a large ravanne (framedrum), and often leads his two colleagues vocally as well. Ricardo Legentile frames the question-and-answer singing with light harmonica play, while Vallen Pierre Louis plays a peculiar snare instrument that’s called a banjo but isn’t at all like one. But none of that detracts from this inciting music’s festive emanations.

Formation

Fall Pierre Louis – banjo, vocals
Francis Prosper – ravanne (frame drum), vocals
Ricardo Legentile – accordion, vocals