VARIOUS – Tsapiky! Modern Music From Southwest Madagascar – LP – Vinyl [APR 18]

LP – Black Vinyl.

Tsapiky music from Southwest Madagascar features wild ecstatic vocals, distorted electric guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat! Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you’ve always wanted – ceremonial music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and dead alike.

In Toliara and its surrounding region, funerals, weddings, circumcisions and other rites of passage have been celebrated for decades in ceremonies called mandriampototse. During these celebrations which last between three and seven days cigarettes, beer and toaky gasy (artisanal rum) are passed around while electric orchestras play on the same dirt floor as the dancing crowds and zebus. The music, tsapiky, defies any classification.

This compilation showcases the diversity of contemporary tsapiky music. Locally and even nationally renowned bands played their own songs on makeshift instruments, blaring through patched-up amps and horn speakers hung in tamarind trees, projecting the music kilometers away. Lead guitarists and female lead singers are the central figures of tsapiky. Driven as much by their creative impulses as by the need to stand out in a competitive market, the artists distinguish themselves stylistically through their lyrics, rhythms or guitar riffs. They must also master a wide repertoire of current tsapiky hits, which the families that attend inevitably request before parading in front of the orchestra with their offerings.

This work, a constant push and pull between distinction and imitation, is nourished by fertile exchanges between various groups: acoustic and electric, rural and urban, coastal or inland. What results during these ceremonies is a music of astonishing intensity and creativity, played by artists carving out their own path, indifferent to the standards of any other music industry: Malagasy, African or global.

Tracklist:

1. MAMEHY – Je mitsiko ro mokotse
(Those who talk dirty behind your back tire themselves out for nothing) [05:27]
2. DRICK – Sinjake Panambola (Dance of the rich) [06:24]
3. SONGADA – Tany be maneky (Name of the bass drum) [05:57]
4. BEHAJA – Marolinta (Name of a village on the south-western tip of Madagascar) [05:54]
5. MENY & ANDO – Ka tseriky iha (Don’t be surprised) [00:45]
6. REBONA – Zana-Konko
(Name given to someone possessed by the evil spirit Konko) [06:39]
7. RENITSA – Arodarodao (Go and dance!) [05:00]
8. BEFILA – Eka ndao (Let’s go) [04:57]
9. MAHAFALY MIHISA – Fanoigna (Heated debate) [05:03]
10. GOROP MILALAZA – Tsapiky Milalaza [06:19]
11. MIRASOA & MAHAPOTEKE – Bleu bleu (Blue blue) [07:45]