Jako Maron – Maloya valsé chok 1

Réunion island’s Jako Maron re-interprets the revolutionary sound of maloya on his debut album, now reissued with a bonus EP of seriously headmashing gear for fans of DJ Python, Pan Sonic, or Authentically Plastic. Not far from Madagascar lies Réunion, a French-governed island that was colonized in the 19th century and populated with enslaved peoples from Madagascar and West Africa, and indentured laborers from South India. One of the most unique musical styles to emerge from the island is called maloya, a percussive mode that sets call-and-response vocals over undulating 6/8 beats. It’s a style of music that was assumed to be so revolutionary that it was banned by the French authorities in the 1960s, when Jako Maron was born. And since the ’90s, Maron has been attempting to fuse the genre with ideas he’s imported from techno, dub and beyond. “The Electr