The Malagasy music
The Malagasy music
The Malagasy music
The Malagasy music
The music is one of the essential components of the culture and the malagasy popular expression. It is omnipresent, whether it is at the time of family or Community festivals (marriages, popular balls) or at the time of the religious and traditional ceremonies (masses, exhumation, “tromba”, circumcision). The music extends the social life and cultural community. Thus in the south-west of the island, the villagers gather and improvise on local instruments such Marovany (Malagasy xylophone), Antranatrana or Koritsina. This last gives time and symbolizes the life and the time which passes. On this basis, the songs will be then impromptu. On the Highlands, “Hira Gasy” are traditional songs, based on morals, taking again proverbs, accompanied by wind instruments and a kind of drum, Aponga which gives rate. The professional troops of Hira Gasy occur each Sunday after midday at the “Tranom-pokonolona” or popular house, in the district of Isotry in Antananarivo. The local festivals, as well as national holiday, are pretext for the recreation, the dance, the demonstrations of joy and the abandonment of the difficulties of the daily life. The festival is accompanied by an inevitable ball often animated in bush by the orchestra of the local whose repertoire often evolves between tradition and modernism. The custom wants that the orchestra and the participants in the ball follow a protocolar opening. After the national anthem, it is for the eminent personage to open the ball by Afindrafindrao “, music of introduction where all the participants form a symbolic chain and turn by couple around the track. It is only then that any kind of music can be played. In full bush, we can be surprised to discover musical instruments, copies of electric guitars, cut into local wood and using for any cord, the fishing line in nylon! The mechanisms are, them, manufactured with the bottom of salvaged scrap. The whole producing right sounds. In Sakalava country, seances of “Tromba” where we call upon the late ancestors are practised in agreement with songs of call accompanied by a melody of the accordion and rhythms jerked by the assistants beats of the hands.
While clicking on this link you will be able to discover a site on the traditional music of Madagascar.
