Menwar SONGS OF CHILDHOOD LE CHANT DE L’ENFANCE Going to meet the immense Mauritian musician is like knocking at the door of history. Stéphano Honoré, a child of the Cassis housing estate in Port Louis, has entered the realm of living legend. Aller à la rencontre de l’immense musicien mauricien, c’est sonner à la porte de l’Histoire. L’enfant de la cité Cassis à Port-Louis, de son vrai nom Stéphano Honoré, est entré vivant dans la légende. BY VIRGINIE LUC PHOTOGRAPHS PIERRE PERRIN He lives in Pointe aux Sables. A modest house set slightly back from the sea, complete with a little garden with a flourishing rosary pea – the tree with pods full of seeds like a percussion instrument. A few kilometres away from his childhood home, the Cassis estate, where he was born on 21 October 1955. “Part of my family still lives there. I’ll never forget, otherwise I might lose sight of myself,” says Menwar, the youngest of eight siblings in a blended family, brought up by his mother. His long, lean body is full of murmurs, of whisperings that rustle like the distant sound of the ravanne drum. He speaks Creole and French, but not English. “I didn’t go to school. My only commitment is to music. I heard it on the radios crackling in the early morning, in the songs from my mother (her ancestors came from Pondicherry, my father’s from Madagascar), and in the sounds of nature that fill the silence day and night,” says the singer-songwriter, the living voice and conscience of Creole culture. “I talk of how life used to be, family, the oil lamp, exile, uprooting. I speak of deafening violence, drugs, of the receding sugar cane plantations. You have to say these things. If we remain in ignorance, we’ll suffer even more.” His skill at Karom (Indian snooker) is said to have earned him the nickname of Menwar, “black hand” in Creole. His expert hands caress rather than beat the ravanne that follows him everywhere. THE DISCOVERY INSTRUMENT At the age of 14, he composed a song for his loving mother and his “vagabond father”. With the help of his “big brothers” – his musician friends, including the legendary Kaya – he recorded his first numbers in a studio in the 1980s. “Encounters, coincidences, vibrations.” He finds his way, revives Sega tipik (music that has come down over the centuries since the time of slavery and which, in 2014, was placed on the UNESCO human heritage list), and blends the Sega beats with those of reggae, jazz and blues to invent his own style, Seggae. His joyous music with no-frills, celebrates the ancestors and brings him to the major music venues and festivals, in Reunion (where he lived for nine years), in Europe – France, England and Germany. “Music shows the way,” says Menwar, who passed on his talent to his musician daughter Sarah Honoré. The way? “It’s both the path you’re going to choose, and also the interior path you might well discover along the way.” To share the treasure of a lifetime, he founded a ravanne school in Mauritius in 1996, free and open to all. “We’re sowing small seeds, but we will pass with the wind.” “I like the simple life. A chat in the garden, a good vibration, and that’s great,” says the sage. Prune, his dog, barks and brings us back to the present. With joined hands, we stand in silence, and that is the sound best suited to this goodbye. “MUSIC SHOWS THE WAY.” « LA MUSIQUE OUVRE LE CHEMIN ».
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