Chapter 07
Twenty-Four Performances Across Mauritian Music
6 min
1. Ti Frère — `Anita` (recorded 1989)
Begin with voice, ravanne, maravanne and triangle at intimate scale. Hear how Ti Frère changes character inside a very short performance.
2. Ti Frère — `La Colère Me Prend` (recorded 1989)
Listen to anger as vocal shape rather than translated subject alone. The ensemble supports intensity without crowding the line.
3. Lorenza Gaspard — `Donn mwa lamin`
Move to Rodrigues through a named bearer and song. Attend to tambour drive, chorus and the invitation carried by the title.
4. Sizonin / Marie Jacqueline Allas — `Fam 3 mari/Mama pingo` (2013)
Stay on Rodrigues but change the bearer, ensemble and task. Allas's sharp voice, improvised wit and tambour knowledge sit inside Sizonin's women-led polyphony, accordion and island percussion.
5. Groupe Tambour Chagos with Mimose Furcy — `Mo ti ena trez an` (2018 album)
Hear forced departure in first-person Chagossian Creole. The tambour and struck bottle give memory a steady public ground.
6. Groupe Tambour Chagos — `Anais mama poul` (2018 album)
Stay with Chagossian repertory but change subject and energy. One political history contains more than one kind of song.
7. National Heritage Fund and Mauritius Film Development Corporation — public Geet-Gawai ceremony (2015)
Hear a complete pre-wedding sequence rather than asking a broadcast song to represent ceremony. Song, household percussion, gesture, laughter and timing become one social form.
8. Kishore Kumar Ramessur — `Kiring Karang`
Move from household sequence to a named Bhojpuri broadcast singer. Listen for refrain, language and the arrangement built for a public recording.
9. Dharmawtee Mungar — `Ghar Ke Bahua`
Place a woman's voice at the centre of Mauritian Bhojpuri song. Notice how narrative line and repeated response divide the work.
10. Biswanee Deepooa — `Zumba` (2024)
Hear a Mauritian writer turn contemporary daily life into Bhojpuri dance song. Humour, direct address and wedding circulation keep the track local without making it ceremonial Geet-Gawai.
11. Rudra Ramkisoon, Radhika Bungsy and collaborators — `Bam Bam Mahadev` (2025)
Open a public Hindu devotional route shaped by young Mauritian performers. The current production revisits prayer and remembered Bhojpuri practice without pretending to reproduce a temple event.
12. Tracy Lin — `The Moon Represents My Heart` from *Love Collection* (2017)
Hear a Sino-Mauritian singer claim public space through Mandarin. This is a transnational standard performed locally, not a song whose authorship has been relocated to Mauritius.
13. Kaya and Racinetatane — `Mo La Mizik` (1989/1990)
Hear the proposition at seggae's beginning: Mauritian Creole, reggae bass and sega memory forming one band language.
14. Kaya — `Zistwar Revoltan` (1996/1997)
Move from the first proposition to a mature political and narrative voice. Two contrasting performances reveal the career arc more clearly than four consecutive titles.
15. Cassiya — `Rev nou ancétres`
Enter large-stage popular sega through a song about ancestry. Bass, horns and chorus turn memory into collective movement.
16. Désiré François and Cassiya — `Larzan Enn Bout Papier` (2025)
Hear musicians revisit their own history through present voices, brass and recording technology. Compare the ensemble's scale with the earlier Cassiya selection.
17. Menwar and Loya — `Mon ravanne` (2022 release)
Follow skin, hand and voice against electronic repetition. Human timing makes the machine grid audible as a choice.
18. Loya featuring Menwar — `Ti Lélé` (2018)
Keep the collaboration but change proportion and duration. Ravanne attack and electronic texture stop behaving as separate demonstration layers.
19. Thomas Brothers — `Segazz` (2005; reissued 2024)
Enter Mauritian jazz through a named composition rather than a genre label. Trumpet, bass and keys make sega rhythm available for improvisation.
20. Thomas Brothers featuring Menwar, Linley Marthe, Mike Rajamahendra and Paco Sery — `Segabird`
Hear ravanne inside a larger improvising ensemble. Follow the bass and drum conversation before the personnel list becomes the main attraction.
21. Blakkayo — `Kontrole` (2021)
Open a later reggae generation through a rough, measured lead voice. The arrangement leaves enough space for each phrase to land.
22. Ced Ric — `LOFÉ!` (2026)
Turn toward Mauritian rap and digital-first production. Compare the compressed vocal attack and beat architecture with the live-band routes that dominate the preceding selections.
23. The Prophecy — `Feeling` (2026)
Keep one current marker from the band's catalogue rather than ending with three consecutive singles. Its smooth reggae frame now sits beside, not on top of, other present-day publics.
24. AnneGa — *Stories* (2026)
End with an album rather than another heritage summary. Moontalk, Satya and titles drawn from several linguistic registers allow one Mauritian woman to move among contemporary identities without being appointed the sound of the whole archipelago.
A practical island route
On Mauritius Island, begin with the 1989 Ti Frère recordings before attending a staged sega show. The archive gives your ear the ravanne-maravanne-triangle relationship; the live event then reveals amplification, choreography and audience. Follow with Kaya, Cassiya, Menwar and a current reggae or jazz programme in Port Louis or the urban corridor.
Give Bhojpuri music its own session through the public Geet-Gawai film, MBC's named recordings and Biswanee Deepooa's present-day authorship. Follow Bam Bam Mahadev and Tracy Lin into devotional and Mandarin publics without treating either as a demographic sample. On Rodrigues, use a current public sega tambour event and retain the group or mareshal's name. For Chagossian music, begin with Groupe Tambour Chagos and community-led cultural events rather than generic island-night entertainment.
For the current scene, compare AnneGa, Ced Ric, Blakkayo and The Prophecy before choosing a venue. Their audiences, production methods and languages lead to different programmes. Keep a simple note for every performance: artist, island or community, language, occasion and date. Mauritius becomes larger and clearer with each precise entry.
Frequently asked questions
Questions about Twenty-Four Performances Across Mauritian Music
1. What is the traditional music of Mauritius?
Sega tipik is the best-known traditional music of Mauritius Island, but the republic also includes sega tambour of Rodrigues, Chagossian sega tambour and Bhojpuri Geet-Gawai. Each has distinct communities, instruments and occasions.
2. Which instruments create sega tipik?
The core ensemble uses ravanne frame drum, maravanne raft rattle and triangle, together with lead voice, chorus and dance. Players create a flexible cycle through different attacks rather than one uniform beat.
3. What is the difference between sega and seggae?
Sega is an older Mauritian Creole music-and-dance field. Seggae is the Mauritian genre Kaya shaped in the late 1980s by bringing sega rhythmic memory into sustained dialogue with roots reggae, Rastafari consciousness and Creole social speech.
4. Who was Ti Frère?
Jean Alphonse Ravaton, known as Ti Frère, was a major twentieth-century sega singer. Recordings made in 1989 preserve his distinctive voice with members of the Ravaton and Toussaint families on ravanne, maravanne and triangle.
5. Why is Kaya important?
Kaya created seggae as a recognisable Mauritian language and recorded a major Creole catalogue with Racinetatane and as a solo artist. His music addressed identity, dignity and social problems. He died in police custody in 1999, triggering national unrest.
6. Is Rodrigues music the same as main-island sega?
No. Rodrigues sega tambour has its own lead-drum technique, triyang, bwat, mayos, mareshal role, community groups and social use, including improvised commentary and conflict resolution.
7. What is sega tambour Chagos?
It is Chagossian music, song and dance centred on a heated tambour and sung in Chagossian Creole. After forced displacement from the Chagos Archipelago, the practice became crucial to community memory, identity and transmission in Mauritius and diaspora.
8. What is Geet-Gawai?
Geet-Gawai is a Mauritian Bhojpuri pre-wedding practice combining rituals, prayers, songs, music, dance and comic performance. Women have been its principal carriers, though it now also appears in public gamat and stage programmes.
9. Which languages are heard in Mauritian music?
Mauritian Creole and Bhojpuri are central to many of the country's musical worlds. French, English and languages connected to Hindu, Muslim, Chinese and other community practices also appear across broadcasting, worship, education and popular music.
10. Where can visitors hear Mauritian music?
Check current programmes from theatres, cultural institutions, festivals and artists in Port Louis and the urban corridor; official calendars on Rodrigues; and community-led Chagossian and Bhojpuri events. Hotel sega shows are one valid stage form, but they are not the whole musical country.
