Tsapiky! Modern Music From South-West Madagascar

Amped Up and Unruly: Tsapiky! Modern Music from Southwest Madagascar

Highlights:

1. Wild ecstatic vocals, distorted electric guitars, rocket bass, and the amphetamine beat!

2. Unlike anything else, this is THE high life music you've always wanted

3. Ceremonial music played with abandon and extreme intent, honoring the living and dead alike

4. Recorded on location in SW Madagascar by Maxime Bobo

This compilation introduces a raw and electrifying portrait of tsapiky, the high-energy music of Southwest Madagascar. It captures the frenetic pulse of a genre shaped by ritual, competition, and sheer sound force. Tsapiky thrives in ceremonies, funerals, weddings, and coming-of-age rites, where musicians perform for days on end, fueling ecstatic dances and communal revelry.

Review by Andrew Cronshaw

https://www.rootsworld.com/

Madagascar has nearly three times the land area of Great Britain, and is the world’s fourth largest island, and the second-largest island country. It has eighteen tribal peoples and areas, and travel is still generally difficult and slow, so it’s not surprising that this huge, very musical country has a variety of distinctive local musics.

The form associated with the area of the south-west around the town of Toliara is a fast, spiky dance music known as tsapiky (pronounced “tsa-peek”). Played at celebrations and ceremonies such as weddings, funerals and circumcisions, it’s typically amplified through Tannoy-type grey-painted horns hung in the trees. This album, apart from one track, is recorded in that sort of situation, the sound taken from those tinny-sounding overdriven horns. (One such system, but playing records, kept me awake one long night, in a dead-bug-spattered bed, in a village somewhere en route in Madagascar. My room had a light switch whose purpose I couldn’t figure out, until I looked in the street and found it operated a red light outside my door!)

Once one’s accustomed to the sound, it’s exciting music. Fast, intricately skittering, distorted electric guitars with female vocalists akin, in energy and irresistible dance-impulsion, to rock’n’roll with the speed control turned up. The eight tracks of the album, four per vinyl side, feature seven popular bands, plus a rather sweet unaccompanied duet from Meny and Ando, the two singers from the band Rebona, a respite recorded not via the horns but at Meny’s home.

Sublime Frequencies

Recorded live on location by Maxime Bobo, this vinyl LP includes a 4-page full-color insert with detailed liner notes plus photos of the musicians and surroundings. 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.

Tsapiky! Modern Music From Southwest Madagascar

Label: Sublime Frequencies – SF126

Visit: https://sublime-frequencies.bandcamp.com/
Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation, Limited Edition
Country: US
Released: Mar 7, 2025
Style: African, Folk
Source: Digital

1. Mamehy - Je Mitsiko Ro Mokotse (“Those Who Talk Dirty Behind Your Back Tire Themselves Out for Nothing”) 5:27
2. Drick - Sinjake Panambola (“Dance of the Rich”) 6:24
3. Songada - Tany Be Maneky (Name of the Bass Drum) 5:57
4. Behaja - Marolinta (Name of a Village on the South-Western Tip of Madagascar) 5:54
5. Meny & Ando - Ka Tseriky Iha (“Don't Be Surprised”) 0:45
6. Rebona - Zana-Konko (Name Given to Someone Possessed by the Evil Spirit Konko) 6:39
7. Renitsa - Arodarodao (“Go and Dance!”) 5:00
8. Befila - Eka Ndao (“Let's Go”) 4:57
9. Mahafaly Mihisa - Fanoigna (Heated Debate) 5:03
10. Gorop Milalaza - Tsapiky Milalaza 6:19
11. Mirasoa & Mahapoteke - Bleu bleu (“Blue Blue“) 7:46