Considered the jewel of the Indian Ocean’s Mascarene Islands, Mauritius is located 1200 Miles off the East Coast of Africa. The music of Mauritius has roots in Afro-Malagassy dance and music traditions from the slaves brought there in the 1600’s and features an intoxicating triplet-based groove. This style was formerly known as Tschiéga, today widely known as Sega. Performed with percussion instruments such as the Ravan (goat skin drum), the Maravanne (sugar cane idiophone/shaker) and triangle, Sega is often improvised and features singers or groups of singers expressing the tribulations of a subjugated, initially enslaved population.

This pack contains handmade rare Mauritian percussion instruments never recorded as samples before. All instruments are played by talented local musicians who benefitted directly from the creation of the pack, which also contains traditional Sega chanting performed by legends of the style. Besides containing rare sounds and the unique Mauritian Sega groove, this pack conserves traditional instruments that are fading into obscurity.

Musicians:


Samule Debois played three types of Ravan’s, two goat skin and one synthetic, as well as the Gerican.

Ti Punk played the Maravan and the rare Pistache.

Kurwin Castel played the triangle, Bobbre and Serpe.

Elvis Heroseau played keys.

Ophely Sauteur, Jason Heerah and the legendary Clarel Armelle on vocals.

Recorded at Studio Kapricorn, these sounds where tracked by using multiple microphone techniques. Close miking was taken care by BeyerDynamic M160 ribbon mics and Shure SM57 dynamics. Townsend Sphere mic took care of the far miking with an array of emulators used. Neve 1073 style preamps were adopted as front end feeding Antelope Orion A/D high end converters.

home page: