Like American gospel, Brazilian candomblé, Cuban santéria, Moroccan gnawa and Jamaican nyabhingi, maloya was originally a method of inducing well-being, joy and a sense of power through solidarity among the living, and between the living and the dead, whose spirits dance in the tropical night air. Its devotees were the descendants of slaves, a people who had been robbed of everything apart from their life on earth, their memory and their culture. And like all those other ‘African’ systems of belief and transcendence, maloya is a mongrel phenomenon.

uważa się, że była wielofunkcyjną praktyką społeczną, która z czasem nabrała również znaczenia oporu i afirmacji tożsamości.Wykonywano ją podczas:

świąt,
spotkań rodzinnych,
ceremonii religijnych i przodków,
pracy,
różnych uroczystości społecznych.

Na to istnieją źródła etnograficzne i historyczne.

Niewolnicy mieli bardzo ograniczone możliwości zachowania własnej kultury.

Muzyka, taniec i rytuały były jednymi z niewielu przestrzeni względnej autonomii.

Historycy kultury często interpretują takie praktyki jako formę „kulturowego oporu”.

Nie oznacza to jednak, że każdy śpiew był protest songiem.

Instrumenty:

kayamb,
roulèr,
bobre,
pikèr.

When the PCR first started to programme Firmin Viry and his family troupe at political gatherings in the late 1960s, maloya was still a proscribed form of music, hidden away in the black shanty towns and worker’s quarters, reviled by the ruling French elite, who only tolerated its more romantic and quaintly folkloric cousin sega, another musical casserole in which African elements are mixed with the genteel quadrilles of the slave owning classes and the popular music of France and Europe.

Maloya was uncompromisingly black and possession of a roulèr or kayamb could earn you a stint in jail or maybe even a few lashes of the sabouk or slave-owner’s whip. The noise of the all night servis kabarés was deemed intolerable, a public nuisance of the worse kind, by priests and ‘quality’ folk alike. According to the likes of Michel Debré, French minister for overseas territories from 1960 to 1983, and a passionate supporter of Christian values and assimilation with France, maloya was only a vulgar reminder of slavery and the shame in La Réunion’s history. Moreover it was sung in Creole, an “absurd” folk language, which the elite deemed incapable of expressing deep emotions or civilised opinions. For them, maloya was best forgotten.