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Time to leave the island and fly back to the northern hemisphere. Christine and Line and the family have come to say goodbye…
Moriarty on tour, Reunion Island, June 2012.

Last day on the island: private concert at the Palaxa, performing a few songs written with Christine Salem and her musicians David, Vincent, Harry…
Moriarty on tour, Saint-Denis de la Réunion, June 2012.

A huge city square at the northern french border. Right opposite the stage, the church bells keep ringing all day because of weddings and confirmations, making so much din it is nearly impossible to play music, even with the help of the festival’s powerful loudspeakers. Arthur asks the priest if it is possible to have silence during our show, but he says the bellringer decides on his own...

Later, as night falls, we drive across the curvy road that gets constantly rebuilt on top of the latest lava eruptions. There the ground is still smoking like a heaving animal in the morning dew. Below our wheels there’s still molten rock waiting for its next awakening…
Moriarty on tour, Reunion Island, June 2012.

Took a drive around the island to reach the foot of the volcano, where the lava flowed straight into the sea a few years ago, expanding the island’s surface and boiling abyssal fish out of the water. Rambling down the frozen flow we stumbled upon a hole in the ground, opening onto a huge cave-like cavity, created by gases trapped beneath the lava crust. We heard the story of a man who...

Pont suspendu de la Rivière de l’Est, Route Nationale 2, Saint-Benoit.
Moriarty on tour, Reunion Island, June 2012.

An unlikely place. The green café, run by a fanatic of St-Etienne’s soccer team, somewhere on the east coast of the Reunion Island. Out there, Christine Salem is known as « la cafrine de feu », both for her character and her stage presence.
Moriarty on tour, Ile de la Réunion, Indian Ocean, June 2012.

Quartier Camélias, home of Christine Salem and cradle of her songs. Halfway between french grands ensembles and mumbai housing blocks. Quartier Chaudron, vanilla and peppers, old creole granmounes eating masalés, concrete towers, mountains in the distance. Squashed tropical fruit over the hot asphalt, where riots took place just three months ago. Moriarty on tour: Saint-Denis, Ile de la Réunion...

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...

Moriarty + Salem songwriting sessions. Ternary meets binary, percussions meet strings and harmonica, creole meets english. Inch’Allah, Sakalav (Drifting Indian Blues), Mi Koné Pa Pourkouè, Lae Lae Laie, Gin Trap, Na Pit Bout (Sans Fin), Lunja… St-Denis de la Réunion, June 9th 2012.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Moriarty’s songwriting sessions with Christine Salem & her musicians. Palaxa, Saint-Denis de la Réunion, 07.03.2012.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Moriarty’s songwriting sessions with Christine Salem & her musicians. Palaxa, Saint-Denis de la Réunion, 07.03.2012.

On the road, moving from one Saint to the other, along the Route du Littoral: Saint-Gilles to Saint-Denis;
Moriarty songwriting sessions with Christine Salem & her musicians. Saint-Denis de la Réunion, 07.06.2012.

Moriarty songwriting with Christine Salem & her musicians. La Saline, Ile de la Réunion, June 2012.

He stepped into the Ocean and the black sand turned into white foam, gigantic waves crashing on the shore with the sound of thunder. Arthur Moriarty, Etang Salé, Ile de la Réunion, June 2012.

Early sunday morning, Waro and his musicians perform for the Sakifo’s « Risofé » (riz chauffé) in Terre Sainte, at the edge of the great Ocean. The Moriarties hitch-hike a good 20km to reach the place. And finally stand in awe in the middle of the audience, under the blazing sun, with shivers down the spine listening to Danyèl’s songs and creole poetry. The crowd is pretty mixed up:...

6pm: Moriarty sings with Salem for a TV show on a stage facing the Indian Ocean and its coral reef; some believe it’s an amber spotlight shining there but it’s actually the setting sun. 7pm: The big stage is called La Poudrière and the audience is quite explosive indeed. Night falls during the gig as the sea blows a warm salty air over the instruments. At the end of the show Christine...

Rehearsal with Christine Salem & her musicians, while the trucks are cleaning up the market of St-Pierre with a deafening racket, and the afternoon sun is burning skin and instruments. Moriarty on tour: Sakifo Festival, St-Pierre de la Réunion, june 2nd 2012.

Ten-hour flight from Paris to the Reunion Island. A Boeing 777 filled with musicians due to perform at the Sakifo Festival flies above Egyt and the Nile Valley, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia. On board it’s a tower of Babel. The musicians of Patrice speak german, Saul Williams speaks american english, Flavia Coelho speaks french intermingled with brazilian portuguese. Upon arrival the bus does an...

Moriarty sings and plays along haïkus and poems written by Jack Kerouac, with sounds and voices from Lowell, Massachusetts. Portrait of the great Jack and his Beat gang in positive/negative: pros and cons, praise and criticism, futility and relevance. In the end it’s just good to play in the presence of the writer’s ghost, inside that deep dark studio unchanged since the fifties...