Soval Chaviré
Soval Chaviré is Stranded Horse's Maloya influenced counterpart, the multi-faceted project by Yann Tambour with Marc Lacaille. The songs written on Reunion Island draw from the band's heady West-African kora folk, blending their crystal-like arpeggios with the trance states brought on by the island's emblematic instruments & vocal harmonies.
In 2017, Yann travelled to Reunion Island to explore the rhythms and vocal harmonies of Maloya. He was hosted at Cité des Arts in Saint Denis, where he met and worked with Aleksand Saya who introduced him to several local musicians. They familiarised him with the local rhythmic patterns, encouraging Yann to approach his already very personal kora technique in a different light. Together, they wrote a predominantly French-speaking repertoire which blended Stranded Horse's crystal-like kora arpeggios with the trance states brought on by bobre, roulèr, pikèr, kayamb and sati, the island's five emblematic instruments, as well as Maloya's vibrant vocal harmonies. Yann returned to Reunion later the same year to perfect the repertoire, and a third time in 2018 with his long time korafola band mate Boubacar Cissokho, who set the songs into a sort of perpetual motion by way of arpeggios only known to true Djelis. The band performed for the first time (still as Stranded Horse back then) at IOMMA, on the island in 2018.
Back on the mainland, Yann met Marco Lacaille, a versatile multi-instrumentalist who played with a great variety of projects ranging from Cocorosie to Christine Salem and who was brought up on Reunionnese music by his father René Lacaille, a key figure of Reunion Sega. Together, they decided to reform the band in Europe with Franco-Algerian singer/percussionist Anissa Néhari (Natasha Atlas, Alqasar), Franco-Venezuelan singer/percussionist Salvador Douezy (Wati Watia Zorey Band) and Boubacar Cissokho who joined the team there as well.
In 2021, they recorded Soval Chaviré's first album, set for release sometime in 2024.
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PRESS
« In the Green Man Cafe, it's the folk upstarts who shine. (...) Stranded Horse, aka Yann
Encre, is a serious young Frenchman who plays acoustic guitar and kora simultaneously, his
dark songs demanding, and getting, hushed respect.»
« He plucks cascades of twinkling notes from a 21-string kora and his studiously subdued
vocals in French and English now suggest the timeless tunes of some travelling medieval
troubadour(...) all visionary declamations and potent silences »
« Never before has anyone taken the kora and done such stylish and effortlessly cool things
with it. »
« Slyly funny, subtly odd stuff. »
« An ever-inspired, folk-leaning acoustic project » ___________________________________________ SHOWCASE IN BABEL MUSIC EXPO in Marseille - 25 March 2023 AVAILABLE ALL YEAR
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