Votia (Reunion)

Marie-Claude Lambert-Phileas, vocals; Fabrice Lambert, vocals, kalimba; Jyothi Lambert, vocals, rouleur drum; Kezia Lambert, vocals, percussion; Richelin Mahano, vocals, percussion; Fabien Boquet, vocals, percussion


For Marie-Claude Lambert-Philéas, a singer and musician from Réunion, music is a family affair. Once accompanying her father – the renowned singer-songwriter Gramoun Lélé – on tour as a young girl, she now continues the family legacy alongside her husband and children. Resonating in Malagasy and Réunion Creole, and driven by exhilarating percussive rhythms, her multi-vocal songs rekindle tradition, passing historical memory on to younger generations.

The Votia group hails from the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where African, Malagasy, Indian, and French colonial traditions intertwine within a compact geographical space. This cultural diversity is not merely the backdrop to the cultural expression of an island renowned for its exceptional musicians – it is its very foundation. At its heart lies maloya, a traditional musical genre that emerged under colonial conditions and long existed on the margins of official cultural life. The voices of enslaved plantation workers have nonetheless come to symbolise resistance and the island’s cultural identity. Rather than treating maloya as a folkloric artefact, Votia understand it in a broader sense – as a living, open system in which rhythm carries memory, the voice becomes a vehicle for storytelling, and repetition serves to deepen meaning.