”Women are goddesses“

Interview by Cécile Calla

In your music, you fuse traditional sounds from Madagascar and Mayotte with Afrobeat and pop. Do these influences date from your childhood?

I grew up with these sounds. My mother listened to reggae, jazz and pop. As a child, I also learned the Debaa, a traditional Arabic song tradition only danced to by women. The movements are feminine and elegant, and a lot is expressed through the hands. This complexity of styles is an expression of our multicultural society.

Who taught you the Debaa?

My grandmother and a teacher at the Koran school we always went to in the afternoons after school. I was seven years old at the time. Mayotte is undergoing profound social and cultural change, but there are still lots of Debaa groups. They are part of our identity, and will probably soon be recognised as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage.

“Women work hard, give birth to children, take them to school, do the housework, look after their husbands – and yet they are constantly threatened by violence”

Your lyrics often tell of self-confident women, for example in the song 'Amani ou Zaina', in which you honour your mother. Would you call yourself a feminist?

I don't like to use the word “feminist”. But of course I want to express through my songs that women are not valued or respected in our culture. For me, women are goddesses; they deserve respect. Women work hard, give birth to children, take them to school, do the housework, look after their husbands – and yet they are constantly threatened by violence.

Society in Mayotte is described as matriarchal, but that's nonsense. It is true that women have always led our political struggles. The so-called Chatouilleuses (“Ticklers”), for example, fought in the 1960s and 1970s to keep Mayotte French. They receive little respect for this, and most young people today don't know about them. They are completely invisible.

In your music, you explicitly address younger people, for example in your current song ‘Bazuka’.

Many young people in Mayotte are left to fend for themselves. In “Bazuka”—the name of a green bamboo stick in Mahorian — I sing about children's games in the forest where people fight each other as part of a kind of performance. I tell young people that they are descended from kings and queens, that they must fight for their future.

How much does the nature of your homeland inspire you?

A lot! Mayotte is a beautiful place, I heal myself with plants and have planted my own vegetable garden. I want to encourage people to really appreciate this beauty and not just take it for granted.

How has the music industry developed in Mayotte in recent years?

We have a huge problem with a lack of professional standards. There are no concert halls, hardly any technical equipment. Some cultural centres for young people called Maisons des jeunes et de la culture have been set up, but they're very rudimentary. Most kids just hang out there.

At the end of last year, Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte. How did it affect island life?

We were completely abandoned. I endured two weeks of sleepless nights and spent my days looking for food and fetching water from a river deep in the forest. My house is made of concrete and is still standing, but the doors and windows were destroyed. We were completely cut off from the world – there was no telephone connection, no electricity. You couldn't even go fishing: along the coast, there was rubbish everywhere, including car wrecks and roof parts. It was a traumatic experience. The situation is still very tense.

How is Mayotte perceived abroad?

Very stereotypically, as poor and neglected. But Mayotte has other sides which are incredibly beautiful. It is home to people who have achieved great things, an active civil society. It has extraordinary biodiversity, and spectacular nature. The goal of my music is to highlight those things too. My next album, which will be released at the end of this year, will be about hope and reconstruction, and it's going to be musically diverse.