Koze lapo: the talking drums of Werner Schulz and Keven Valentin |27 November 2004

Round and round a central bonfire the men and women stamp with their bare feet upon the trodden earth to the insistent rhythm of a drum… As they circle round they chant, sometimes swaying to and fro and throwing up their arms…”

So wrote the British fisheries scientist Francis Downes Ommanney after spending two years in Seychelles at the end of the 1940s. To him moutya was part of “these strange ecstasies and gregarious excitements … quite closed to us (Europeans) and outside our understanding altogether.” Not so to German-born Werner Schulz. In the introduction to his latest production, Koze lapo (excellently translated in context as “Talk to me, drum”), he describes his fascination with – and, we suspect, intuitive understanding of – moutya when he discovered it on arriving in Seychelles in the early 1970s: “It kind of drifted through the air on a Saturday night – scented by smoke from the fire and laughter – held together by the boom of the moutya drum…”

Then came “modernisation” and “globalisation”. These days, a lot of people I know seem to listen to only R ‘n’ B (usually made in America) or dancehall reggae (both imported and home-grown). Moutya has to all intents and purposes been relegated, in an adulterated form, to “folkloric performances” put on for tourists who either are really undiscerning or whose tastes we underestimate. Sega is fast heading that way too. We desperately need creative souls who are able to meld the essence of traditional Seychellois music with “universal” modern influences such as jazz or hip-hop. Jean-Marc Volcy, John Vital, Ralf and a handful of others have suggested possible ways forward.

When Werner first told me many months ago that he was overcome with nostalgia for the authentic Seychellois music he used to love listening to, and that he was working with Keven Valentin “to create a sound that triggers the island feeling”, I was decidedly sceptical. You see, I was quite disillusioned with what foreign groups like Deep Forest had come up with in the way of “ethnic/ambient sound”. Wasn’t this attempt to revive moutya and other traditional Seychellois musical forms going to sound as gimmicky and forcé?

I was impressed when I saw the carton CD case and accompanying booklet: a beautifully cropped photographed of a moutya drum in a sepia tint, a distinctly “Creole” feel. But what was the album going to sound like? I was still apprehensive as I slipped it into my CD player and pressed “play”.

Relief, followed by surprise and then utter delight set in as I listened to the title track, nearly five minutes of solid moutya beat with a “contemporary” edge that will hold its own against any trendy house music track. I could imagine myself wanting to dance to this in a discothèque! I realised then that in Keven Valentin, Werner Schulz had found the perfect voice to turn his “island sound” concept into reality - Keven has got that timbre that when combined with the pulse of the moutya drum is evocative of all those things Seychellois: sunlight on granite, tang of cinnamon in the monsoon wind, coconut fronds awash with sea spray. Not forgetting that he is also a very talented percussionist.

Percussion, of course, is the very stuff of moutya and sega. Throughout Koze lapo it is there, the constant heartbeat of our creolitude. But then, in the middle of it all, Werner Schulz’s whimsicality comes into play: a guitar and even a bouzouki is strummed here and there to impart a personal note in this tapestry of island sound.

This article is not advertising copy, and I’m not going to pretend I was in raptures over absolutely every single track on this album. But I recommend very strongly that you pay attention to Laklos, Peser perdi, Nanryen napa, De anmoure and, of course, the title track Koze lapo itself. And I really do think I have found the perfect end-of-year gift for my friends living overseas!

Pat Matyot