Who would have thought that in the midst of music from East Africa, South Africa and also Rock’n’Roll, in the South-West of Madagascar, there existed the music of the invincible? There, in Tuléar, a whole region has been living for the last 25 years to the sound of saturated electric guitars and to the energized rhythm of the bass drums of zebu skin.
In a land of music divided into tradition, evangelisation and mainstream pop, the Tsapiky is the enfant terrible: untameable and as furious as it is exhilarated, it took shape on the fringes, inspired in the repertory of local “traditional” music that it intensified with an ultra fast arrangement between the bass-drums-guitar, in which the high melodies and vocals weave together. A drastic remedy to the ambient misery, Tsapiky is everywhere: when people get married, buy a new car, circumcise their son, get depressed, bury their ancestors or exhume them to make merry together…there’s a party! And it is Tsapiky that leads them all into the trance.
Damily and his musicians fell in love with Tsapiky when teenagers, and Tsapiky has rewarded them well: together they have travelled through kilometres of bush with their sound system of fortune, playing for hours, for days and for nights, cut off from the world for over a decade. The group began travelling to Europe in 2006, and avoiding the usual circuits of musical production and formatting, they found a place both in underground parties and on the stages of international festivals, where they are hailed as ambassadors.
Damily, guitars, vocals / Gany-gany, vocals, percussion / Naivo, Drums /Rakapo, bass / Kolody, vocals
