{"id":129668,"date":"2025-03-07T17:36:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T15:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=129668"},"modified":"2025-06-27T09:51:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T07:51:51","slug":"jako-maron-maloya-alien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/jako-maron-maloya-alien\/","title":{"rendered":"Jako Maron, the maloya alien"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“It was like a mass! It was madness: the audience loved it!<\/em>” enthuses Jako Maron about the historic reformation of the Force Indig\u00e8ne collective, who made their mark on R\u00e9union Island with the first electronic hip-hop album in 2004. Blending Pei percussion, hip-hop beats, jungle swings, 360\u00b0 samples and electronic textures, produced and arranged by a Jako Maron who was inspired by the sound of Dead Prez, Z’Amalgame<\/a><\/em> has just been remastered and reissued on vinyl to celebrate the crew’s twentieth anniversary. The group was also invited to perform last October on stage at Les \u00c9lectropicales, the island’s unmissable electronic music festival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople knew Franky Lauret and Babou B’Jalah’s lyrics by heart: <\/em>Z’Amalgame is the sound of their youth,<\/em>\u201d he adds with the pride of one who seems to have suffered from a lack of recognition. “It moved me to play this repertoire on an official podium, a truly beautiful stage where, for once, people knew my work. At the time and for a long time, I remained an underground guy.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Nyege Nyege tribe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their partnership came to fruition in 2018, when Nyege Nyege Tapes<\/a> published The Electro Maloya Experiments of Jako Maron<\/a><\/em>, a compilation that brings together ten years of research and experimentation. In his studio-laboratory, the producer set out to dissect and reconstruct the rhythmic DNA of maloya, the emblematic music of Reunion Island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Jako Maron’s hands, maloya, the ternary blues inherited from the island\u2019s former slaves and totem to Reunion’s creolit\u00e9, is propelled into the future with the help of modular synthesizers. Sati, pik\u00e8r, kayamb, roul\u00e8r… On his machines, the incandescent pulse of traditional maloya percussion is reinvented, with a rave and acid trance addition and a clear objective: dance. It’s not the first, but this album reveals the audacity of the producer who, at the age of fifty, is finally attracting the interest of the (inter)national press and peers, notably the British genius Aphex Twin, who mixed one of his tracks live<\/a> the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore I met Nyege Nyege, I found it hard to believe in myself. I felt like an alien all alone in his saucer with my tinkering and modular synths,\u201d <\/em>admits Jako. “But they trusted me, they took me seriously, and thanks to them, I exist. They pushed me to experiment further and be who I am. Now I know that what I’m doing is real music. That’s huge for me, it changes everything. When I went to play at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda, I also met all the artists in the crew: it opened up my chakras (laughs) and I realized that there are tons of aliens on Earth. I’d finally found my tribe, and that felt really good!”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The voice of the bobre<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, the producer has kept busy. When he’s not touring the world with the extra-terrestrial troupe, Jako Maron keeps his island in mind and composes less technoid repertoires \u201cmore accessible to the Reunionese public<\/em>\u201d by teaming up with local artists. Alongside poet Axel Sautron and percussionist Zan Amemoutou-Laope, the grandson of legendary s\u00e9gatier Maxime Laope, Jako Maron released his 2022 album Kabar Jako<\/a><\/em>, a project where the sound of machines rubs shoulders with the lamenting fonnk\u00e8r and the organic power of percussion. On stage, the trio pays tribute to the jubilation of kabar maloya, a festive, public celebration that must be distinguished from servis kabar\u00e9, the ceremony of ancestor worship whose song and dance ritual is reserved for the initiated. And it’s precisely this spiritual dimension that Jako Maron explores on his new album, Mahav\u00e9louz<\/a><\/em>, unveiled in early February on Nyege Nyege Tapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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