Music in the Nineties.

My Life in Music: Part Five

The 90s.

At the end of the 80s, the monster album was  Paul Simon's "Graceland," which was a brilliant collaboration with bands from South Africa. We had been to Kenya and longed for another adventure like that.

And so, everything changed: We took a posting to Seychelles for three years to work in the marine parks there. We had no TV and the only radio station we could receive was the government station. I must say, it didn’t bother us much. Our neighbours listened to two kinds of music: Reggae and Country Music. On a Sunday morning I might walk out early through the palms on Praslin Island counting black parrots to the sound of Bob Marley singing “Don’t Worry about a thing, Every Little Thing’s Gonna be Alright.” The booming reggae bass would be coming from a wooden house, hidden in the trees. I was in Little Jamaica. Further on, another house would have the radio on and I would hear one of those cowboy evangelists singing about how he had been a poor sinner and almost died until he saw the light. I preferred the Reggae. 

Seychelles has its own language called Kreol. This is mostly made up of pigeon French, some English, some Indian, Malagasy, and some African words, all mixed together and infused with Swahili spelling which is phonetic. Bon jour, becomes bonzur and we also have bonswa for "Good-night". The Franglais element is endearing to us Brits but makes the French cringe.

Guide at Vallee de Mai with a Seychelles coco-de-mare.

“Bonswa monzami, komonsava?” 

“Mon byen.” or more in the English way, “Pa tro mal” 

The real local music is sung in Kreol. It combines French dance tunes with a particular African beat called Sega. Tourists hear it in the hotels, but the locals, who hang out at grandma’s house during weekends, still know all the songs. I learned to dance a bit of Sega and can remember some of the tunes. We bought a few tapes by local musicians including Jonise Juliette. 

On returning to the RSPB in Bedfordshire I was given the job of managing the Seychelles programme and, as a bonus, I was given Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to work in too. I found Uganda to have the most interesting music, drawing on all the countries around it for influences. The Half London Club in Kampala was a delight with bands from Rwanda and Mali joining the local ones. 

Despite all the other things going on in the 90s music scene, I think I was most interested in the African music I heard.