Gwendoline Absalon: Vangasay

Gwendoline Absalon: Vangasay

Roots & Routes Listening Post 272. The name of Réunion, France’s Indian Ocean department, commemorates the union of radical and bourgeois forces during the French Revolution. So it’s ironic that for much of the twentieth century authorities in Paris prohibited...
Maya Kamaty: Pandiyé

Maya Kamaty: Pandiyé

Don’t Mind the Gap Listening Post 219. Maloya and the Creole of her native Réunion were the chosen causes of Maya Pounia’s musician father and storyteller mother—activists in the movement to preserve a music heritage long suppressed and a language long marginalized....
Ann O’aro

Ann O’aro

All Is Forbidden Listening Post 184. She stares from the album cover—stark, vulnerable, penetrating. From outside, Ann O’aro’s life may seem in search of a metaphor, a verbal contrivance to make it sound less horrifying, but she’s beyond that. As a child, she played...