Global Hit

Luciano Mabrouck

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The French speaking island of Reunion, which as musician Luciano Mabrouck tells us there, is in the Indian Ocean, just next to Mauritius.

Luciano Mabrouck is leader of a Reunion reggae outfit called Kom Zot. That makes Mabrouck French, since Reunion is a French overseas territory. Armed with a long list of post-colonial grievances, Luciano Mabrouck relies on the activist idiom of reggae to express himself.

It doesn’t get any more evident than the track Ini Anou. In it, he paraphrases the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, and the line “allons enfants de la patrie.” But Mabrouck makes it “allons enfants d’Afrique.”

Luciano Mabrouck says it means we’ve got to unite.

All of us, he explains, in Africa, all of France’s overseas territories, even France, we’ve got to get together because life in many parts of Africa can be unpleasant.

There’s violence, there’s war, there are gangs.

So all I’m saying is let’s unite to make life better for all. We’ll leave you today with one more track from Kom Zot’s album “Fe In Zes.” This may be reggae from Reunion.

But Luciano Mabrouck brought in Jamaican instrumentalist Tyrone Downie for direction, arrangements and guidance.

So while you may not get the creole lyrics, the groove on tracks like “Wadada Day” reminds us that authentic reggae is urgent in any language.