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Mikea - made in Madagascar
Mikea's Forest Blues
Paris
10/02/2009 -
Théo Rakotovao and his group Mikea put Madagascar on the musical map in November 2008, carrying off RFI's "Découvertes" award. Ardent defenders of "beko", a traditional blues sound from southern Madagascar, the 33-year-old singer and his group already have two albums to their name. And they brought the house down when they performed live on stage in Paris for the first time on Monday, 10 February 2009.
For those of you not familiar with the geography of Madagascar, the Mikea Forest is a long green strip of spiny, semi-arid forestland stretching over a hundred kilometres across the south-west of the island. In popular imagination, the Mikea Forest is a dark and mysterious place - a place most locals still believe is haunted by ancestral spirits. It was here, in the heart of this isolated bushland, that Théo Rakotovao, Mikea's lead singer and frontman, was born.
When Théo and his group carried off RFI's "Découvertes" award in November 2008, (hosted that year in Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo), the news spread like wildfire, reaching the tiny village of Antanimieva where Théo grew up. Villagers who had tuned into the national radio station the previous night spread the good tidings at the market the next day, expressing their hope and pride in the 'local boy made good.' For in accepting the RFI award, Théo Rakotovao found himself invested with a new mission - not only was he to become a roving musical ambassador for Madagascar, he was about to introduce the Mikea, the island's little-known tribe of hunter-gatherers, to the rest of the world.
Before embarking upon any kind of musical mission abroad, Théo made an impact on the home front. His new-found fame in the national media made his compatriots aware of a whole new sector of Malagasy culture. "The music that gets played on TV and radio in Madagascar is basically pop and 'variété'," Théo explains, "It's OK, but I think musically speaking Madagascar has a lot more to offer. I believe Madagascan music could easily enjoy the same status abroad as music from Senegal or Mali."
The singing cowherd
Whereas polyphonic music from Madagascar's 'high plateaux' and ultra-rhythmic salegy from the north of the island have managed to filter through to the international music scene, Théo and his group Mikea play a totally different sound - "beko", a bluesy style of lament from southern Madagascar traditionally associated with funerals and mourning. Théo began singing around the age of twelve as a lonely cowherd, performing his first songs to an audience of 120 zebus. "Working as a cowherd involves very long days," he explains, "We'd leave around six in the morning and get back around six at night. At lunchtime we basically had to root around in the forest and look for something to eat. I guess we sort of took to singing to pass the time."
Théo's father, a former mechanic who reinvented himself as a farmer, insisted that all thirteen of his children should remain at school as long as possible and get a decent education. Théo was sent off to Ankililoaka, around 70 kilometres from his home village, where he attended a local school run by Salesian priests. Here, he learnt to play the guitar, the accordion and the flute and first stepped behind the microphone as a singer. In 1992, he was sent to the Collège du Sacré-Cœur de Tuléar, a major city eight hours' drive from his home.
Living in Tuléar as a poor student on his own, Théo was handicapped by his use of dialect which made many of his peers dismiss him as a country simpleton. "As soon as I opened my mouth and started speaking in Masikoro, girls just fell about laughing," he says, "It was impossible to chat anyone up!" Théo went on to make an impact at the local church, however, where he played keyboards and sang with the choir, regularly receiving compliments on his voice. After failing his 'baccalauréat', Théo moved to Diego-Suarez, on the other side of Madagascar, and lived with one of his sisters in order to retake the exam in 1997.
After winning a local talent contest, Théo went on to gain valuable live experience performing pop and 'variété' music on the cabaret circuit. Meanwhile, he gained a place to study management at Antananarivo University. Théo ended up siphoning off part of his student grant to finance the recording of his first songs in 2000. But his first record went nowhere. Three years on, Théo underwent a complete change of musical direction. He started playing traditional music and formed his own group, Mikea. Théo had just graduated from university with a degree and his family could not understand why he was wasting time on music rather than looking for a job as a civil servant. Théo came under so much pressure from his family that in the end he was forced to invent a fictional tale about having become a business entrepreneur in order to keep playing music in secret!
Hard times
Théo did manage to make a video clip with Mikea that was shown on national television. And, by a stroke of luck, the video came to the attention of Rajery, one of Madagascar's major music stars. The legendary valiha-player liked what he heard and got in touch with Théo, offering to lend him his studio where he recorded a debut album, Longo, in 2006. Unable to find distribution for the album, Mikea's debut sank without a trace despite the fact that the group had started to make a name for themselves on the live circuit. At this point, Théo admits he was close to throwing in the towel. "I remember thinking to myself, 'OK, I do have some talent, but maybe I'm not on the right path here.' Those were hard times for me; there were days when I didn't eat."
Then a phone call came from out of the blue, changing everyone's destiny. Thanks to their debut CD, Longo, Théo and his group made it through to the finals of The Indian Ocean Music Award 2007. Boosted by this sudden turn-around, Théo persuaded his musicians to head back into the studio and they made an entirely self-produced album, Taholy, in May 2008. Determined to make the album as perfect as possible, Théo booked twenty days in the best studio in town and forced the sound engineer to remix every song four times until he got exactly what he wanted. He then persuaded Madagascar's former Culture Minister, Tsilavina Ralaindimby, to translate his song lyrics, publishing them in a CD booklet he paid for by selling off a couple of zebus. The former cowherd and his band went on to win RFI's "Découvertes" award in 2008 and their vibrant mix of beko'n'blues is now sweeping the world, garnering new fans every day.
Bertrand Lavaine
Translation : Julie Street
14/11/2008 -
