If you’re lucky enough to have ever made it over to Mauritius (an idyllic island slap bang in the middle of the Indian ocean) the chances are you’ll have been treated to a performance by some of the local “sega” musicians. There’ll have been a lot of smiling, a fair bit of dancing, and some ridiculously cheerful vaguely African rhythms. All in all, it’s a routine that visitors to almost any tourist attraction in the continent will be familiar with. Sadly that’s the only impression of sega that most people will have outside the Sonic the Hedgehog variety. And that’s something that Mo Kolours would like to change. (For the rest of the story, click the “read more”).
He’s a half Mauritian, half English, half percussionist half beatmaker who’s just dropped his first EP Drum Talking. It’s as much of a mix of influences as the man himself. Drum Talking is a highly personal record that reflects Mo’s personality, his background and his roots; a record where English electronica and hip-hop fuse with African percussion, rhythms and vocal stylings. It’s a potent mix that ranges from the psychdelic dub of “Bakiraq” to the dubstep flavours of “8 Hours” but always keeps sega firmly at its heart.
“Sega is a massive thing for me. Growing up with my dad and listening to it as a kid was a trippy experience. It definitely inspired me. Mauritius is an incredible melting pot: it’s an African nation, a tiny island out in the middle of nowhere with people from all these different backgrounds, largely Indian, but African, Chinese, European as well. And sega music is creole (from the African element) meaning it’s the music of a minority in Mauritius, which makes it even more important to keep it going. So I’ve always tried to incorporate sega rhythms, as well its freeness, in my music.”
This freedom that sega offers, its almost freestyle approach to making music and recording seems to permeate almost every aspect of Mo Kolour’s music. Ask him why a song’s called such and such, or why he did this or that on another track, and he’ll laugh and be refreshingly candid and say that he simply doesn’t know.
“If I want to record some percussion, I’ll press the red button and hope that it’s going to be alright. And if not, it’ll be part of the song anyway. Same with the vocals, I don’t really plan anything; I press record and say some stuff that I’m thinking about and what not. The fact that a recording is the result of that particular moment in time, that’s sega.”
And despite his seemingly throwaway approach, like most things down carelessly, it all comes together very nicely indeed on Drum Talking. Mo’s vocals work like an afrobeat refrain, circling and chasing themselves hypnotically, an effect made even more ethereal by the way he chops and loops them up. The lyrics are simple (“right here, right now” on “Bakiraq”, “rain falls, like the wind blows, like the trees move, like the sun shines” on “Biddies”) but the composition, and the rhythms are anything but. As you’d expect on a release called Drum Talking, it’s all about the rhythm here, and everything from the vocals to the hi-hat serves the beat.
“With this first EP I wanted to talk about my love for drums and how much rhythm and drums are music for me. Hence the name Drum Talking and the vocal cuts about drums. And I wanted to incorporate my African heritage too. I’m proud to be repping Mauritius and bringing sega to people’s ears, or at least letting them think about it, as not many people know about it and there is some great stuff from it.”
“But in Mauritius people aren’t necessarily proud of it. When I was there it was really hard to find good sega. I went to all the record shops and music places trying to find original recordings of old sega, but people don’t appreciate it any more. I found one artist, Ti Frère. He’s the only guy to have made sega into actual songs instead of just freestyles on the beach. There are some rough recordings of his stuff, but that’s all I could find. Since I’ve been back in London I’ve met people and discovered more, but Ti Frère was all that I could find in Mauritius. People would ask me why I was looking for it. It saddens me.”
At this point in the conversation we start discussing why it’s so often people from outside a culture who are more interested in discovering and preserving the music and culture of a scene or genre rather than the inhabitants themselves.
“People often don’t know what they’ve got, as the things that you have are boring you know? Whereas some other part of the planet seems much more exotic and appealing. That’s why I think Britain is a nation of collectors who like to go around the world looking for butterflies and stuff to catalog it and stick on the wall to admire. We like to be able to put everything in its place and pigeonhole it and that’s something I’m really interested in breaking. My mixed roots don’t allow me to lie in just one box as a person and that’s always permeated into my creativity, so I’m always trying to cross boundaries and confuse these butterfly collectors. That’s why I wouldn’t say my music is ‘sega’ necessarily. Yes, some of the rhythms are influenced by it, but I like too many different style of music for it to come out like sega only.”
“People in England do find things more interesting when they’re from Africa, but that’s coming from a Western perspective, around the rest of the world, I don’t know if people would mind as much. Have you heard of Francis Bebey? He’s from Cameroon, a musician and scholar who studied in Paris and America and became a teacher of African music. He made a couple of incredible albums and if you’re into African music/electronics, he’s your man.”
“He wrote a book, African Music: A People’s Art, trying to intellectualise an African stance on making music and how it’s part of life there, basically. African music is life, it’s not people doing their thing and then going to make music, it’s people doing their thing, and it being music. I’m not explaining it well, but you should read the book, it’s amazing.”
“I think it’s hard for us in the West to really grasp how important music is in Africa. You can’t make it part of life, you can’t want it to be part of life, you either grow up with it in your face and it’s something you think about naturally or it’s not. That’s where the fascination for us in the West comes from, I presume, as it’s not in our culture. And it won’t be unless music is suddenly and totally integrated into our everyday being.”
“Ultimately, we are all just people and ok, we all come from some other corner of another land mass, but at the end of the day we’re all the same and it’s nice to be able to share ideas and integrate our cultures. I think it’s really important and it’s something that I feel strongly about. It’s one thing to look at African music and appreciate it from a Western perspective, it’s another to try to mash it all together and not call it African, not call it Western music, but something in itself, something that’s a merger of these two beautiful ends of the spectrum. We’ll see it happen more and more: the world’s getting smaller and mixed people are becoming more and more of a normal thing. It’s the future.”
And for Mo Kolours at least, the future starts with Drum Talking. His EP is available to buy now, just CLICK HERE. You can find more information at onehandedmusic.com.
Mo Kolours: Bringing Sega into the 21st Century
If you’re lucky enough to have ever made it over to Mauritius (an idyllic island slap bang in the middle of the Indian ocean) the chances are you’ll have been treated to a performance by some of the local “sega” musicians. There’ll have been a lot of smiling, a fair bit of dancing, and some ridiculously cheerful vaguely African rhythms. All in all, it’s a routine that visitors to almost any tourist attraction in the continent will be familiar with. Sadly that’s the only impression of sega that most people will have outside the Sonic the Hedgehog variety. And that’s something that Mo Kolours would like to change. (For the rest of the story, click the “read more”).
He’s a half Mauritian, half English, half percussionist half beatmaker who’s just dropped his first EP Drum Talking. It’s as much of a mix of influences as the man himself. Drum Talking is a highly personal record that reflects Mo’s personality, his background and his roots; a record where English electronica and hip-hop fuse with African percussion, rhythms and vocal stylings. It’s a potent mix that ranges from the psychdelic dub of “Bakiraq” to the dubstep flavours of “8 Hours” but always keeps sega firmly at its heart.
“Sega is a massive thing for me. Growing up with my dad and listening to it as a kid was a trippy experience. It definitely inspired me. Mauritius is an incredible melting pot: it’s an African nation, a tiny island out in the middle of nowhere with people from all these different backgrounds, largely Indian, but African, Chinese, European as well. And sega music is creole (from the African element) meaning it’s the music of a minority in Mauritius, which makes it even more important to keep it going. So I’ve always tried to incorporate sega rhythms, as well its freeness, in my music.”
This freedom that sega offers, its almost freestyle approach to making music and recording seems to permeate almost every aspect of Mo Kolour’s music. Ask him why a song’s called such and such, or why he did this or that on another track, and he’ll laugh and be refreshingly candid and say that he simply doesn’t know.
“If I want to record some percussion, I’ll press the red button and hope that it’s going to be alright. And if not, it’ll be part of the song anyway. Same with the vocals, I don’t really plan anything; I press record and say some stuff that I’m thinking about and what not. The fact that a recording is the result of that particular moment in time, that’s sega.”
And despite his seemingly throwaway approach, like most things down carelessly, it all comes together very nicely indeed on Drum Talking. Mo’s vocals work like an afrobeat refrain, circling and chasing themselves hypnotically, an effect made even more ethereal by the way he chops and loops them up. The lyrics are simple (“right here, right now” on “Bakiraq”, “rain falls, like the wind blows, like the trees move, like the sun shines” on “Biddies”) but the composition, and the rhythms are anything but. As you’d expect on a release called Drum Talking, it’s all about the rhythm here, and everything from the vocals to the hi-hat serves the beat.
“With this first EP I wanted to talk about my love for drums and how much rhythm and drums are music for me. Hence the name Drum Talking and the vocal cuts about drums. And I wanted to incorporate my African heritage too. I’m proud to be repping Mauritius and bringing sega to people’s ears, or at least letting them think about it, as not many people know about it and there is some great stuff from it.”
“But in Mauritius people aren’t necessarily proud of it. When I was there it was really hard to find good sega. I went to all the record shops and music places trying to find original recordings of old sega, but people don’t appreciate it any more. I found one artist, Ti Frère. He’s the only guy to have made sega into actual songs instead of just freestyles on the beach. There are some rough recordings of his stuff, but that’s all I could find. Since I’ve been back in London I’ve met people and discovered more, but Ti Frère was all that I could find in Mauritius. People would ask me why I was looking for it. It saddens me.”
At this point in the conversation we start discussing why it’s so often people from outside a culture who are more interested in discovering and preserving the music and culture of a scene or genre rather than the inhabitants themselves.
“People often don’t know what they’ve got, as the things that you have are boring you know? Whereas some other part of the planet seems much more exotic and appealing. That’s why I think Britain is a nation of collectors who like to go around the world looking for butterflies and stuff to catalog it and stick on the wall to admire. We like to be able to put everything in its place and pigeonhole it and that’s something I’m really interested in breaking. My mixed roots don’t allow me to lie in just one box as a person and that’s always permeated into my creativity, so I’m always trying to cross boundaries and confuse these butterfly collectors. That’s why I wouldn’t say my music is ‘sega’ necessarily. Yes, some of the rhythms are influenced by it, but I like too many different style of music for it to come out like sega only.”
“People in England do find things more interesting when they’re from Africa, but that’s coming from a Western perspective, around the rest of the world, I don’t know if people would mind as much. Have you heard of Francis Bebey? He’s from Cameroon, a musician and scholar who studied in Paris and America and became a teacher of African music. He made a couple of incredible albums and if you’re into African music/electronics, he’s your man.”
“He wrote a book, African Music: A People’s Art, trying to intellectualise an African stance on making music and how it’s part of life there, basically. African music is life, it’s not people doing their thing and then going to make music, it’s people doing their thing, and it being music. I’m not explaining it well, but you should read the book, it’s amazing.”
“I think it’s hard for us in the West to really grasp how important music is in Africa. You can’t make it part of life, you can’t want it to be part of life, you either grow up with it in your face and it’s something you think about naturally or it’s not. That’s where the fascination for us in the West comes from, I presume, as it’s not in our culture. And it won’t be unless music is suddenly and totally integrated into our everyday being.”
“Ultimately, we are all just people and ok, we all come from some other corner of another land mass, but at the end of the day we’re all the same and it’s nice to be able to share ideas and integrate our cultures. I think it’s really important and it’s something that I feel strongly about. It’s one thing to look at African music and appreciate it from a Western perspective, it’s another to try to mash it all together and not call it African, not call it Western music, but something in itself, something that’s a merger of these two beautiful ends of the spectrum. We’ll see it happen more and more: the world’s getting smaller and mixed people are becoming more and more of a normal thing. It’s the future.”
And for Mo Kolours at least, the future starts with Drum Talking. His EP is available to buy now, just CLICK HERE. You can find more information at onehandedmusic.com.
- Will Georgi