Alain Peters – Rest’la maloya {1977}
Great folk music by Alain Peters who lived on the island La Reunion. A compilation of his work has just been re-released by the interesting label Moi J’Connais Records from Switzerland.
“Alain Peters is one of the best-kept secrets in the music scene of the Indian Ocean and beyond. His music is unique: a blend of Creole blues, maloya and international folk, it discretely takes hold of you and never leaves you. Peters travelled through the 70s and the 80s like a shooting star, alone or with a band, with his Sahelian lute, his reel-to-reel tape recorder, firewater and ill-fated genius. He died in 1995, aged 43. Poet, musician, singer and melody-maker, he left behind a handful of sublime songs which are gathered here for the first time on vinyl. Full of dazzling beauty and sparkling darkness, his songs express the yearning homesickness of the Creoles’ highly sensitive wandering soul, at the crossroads of African, Indian and European cultures. Réunion (literally “the gathering”) is aptly named and over the course of his uncertain career, Peters continuously embodied the soul of this culturally hybrid land with a fusion of African instruments, Indian mysticism and European poetry.“