Moriarty + Salem, premiering new songs written together, in front of a few hundred people at Kabar Boissy, a concert venue hidden in the middle of the sugarcane fields, high above Saint-Pierre de la Réunion. We drove from St-Denis and reached the place through winding secret roads lined with high walls of cane, and walked with the instruments in pitch darkness – no streetlights out here, only the half-moon shining cold and blue – and heard music filtered through the vegetal mass, a reggae band from Cilaos… The clearing was packed with people moving and cheering. The stage was made of bamboo sticks and plywood floor and pieces of fabric. A few lights flared up against the canopy of the trees sheltering us from the open dark nothingness around. Within ten minutes we set up the instruments and started playing: « Black Betty » a cappella with percussion and claps, « Sakalavé » (the drifting indian blues) with its hectic finale, « Inshallah » calm and suave and beautiful with Kristine singing on the rouleur drum and Rosemary on vocals, « Mi Koné Pa Pourkouè » with everybody hammering out the sextolets born from the encounter of Rosemary’s guitar and Kristine Salem’s Madagascar-styled percussion… The audience trampled the red volcanic earth, swaying to the hybrid rythms and shouted in creole and wanted more so we ended the show with a « Whiteman’s Ballad » – subconscious connection to the memory of the slaves who toiled in these very fields we were standing in? Moriarty on tour, Reunion Sessions, Indian Ocean, June 9th 2012. (news article by C. Labonne)
