The moutya , born out of the Sega Ancien or Sega Primitif, is one of the national music and dance of the Seychelles Islands. It is a dance performed in the open, often described as a ‘ladans dan later ‘ or ladans dan lapousyer meaning that they were danced outside in the dust. It was once important as a tool, in the process of adaptation. Through it, early African and Malagasy slaves brought to the islands articulated their sorrow, their yearning for home and their means of adapting to a new environment. Like other forms of cultural expression, the moutya also functioned as a pressure valve at times of great tension, distress and oppression. Moreover, it has been, and still is to a very small extent, an outlet or medium to convey stories and myths.
For Illustrative Purposes Only
This post in the first in a series of posts relating to the moutya and the sega. In this first post, we will discuss the origin of the moutya and more specifically the Sega Ancien, and in future posts we will discuss topics like moutya themes; dancing the moutya; moutya rythm; moutya drums and moutya musical structure. Please note that these posts are my own interpretation of the topic gathered from my research and reading that I have done and are not recommended to be used as research material.
Please note that in the Seychellois creole an e is pronounced as if it was an e cute ( é )in French and this is why there is no e cute ( é) in the Seychelles sega.
How was the Moutya born?
In order to understand the birth of the moutya we need firstly to go to its roots and, to do this, we will look at the location where it was born, and this in Réunion Island then called Ile Bourbon.
The Colonisation of Réunion Island
A brief history of Réunion Island will assist us here in our understanding of this phenomenon. The Réunion Island was uninhabited until 1642 when the French East India Company established a layover station for ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope on route to India. In 1649, they officially claimed the island in the name of the king and named it “Ile Bourbon” . Colonization started in 1665, when the French East India Company sent the first twenty settlers to the island. Technically the first language to be spoken in Réunion was French.
There was no great rush to populate and develop the island and, from around 1685, Indian Ocean pirates began using Ile Bourbon as a trading base. In 1704, there were only 423 whites and 311 slaves on the island.
For Illustrative Purposes Only
The First Slaves Arrive
Until 1715, the French East India Company was content to provide only for its own needs and those of passing ships, but then coffee was introduced, and between 1715 and 1730 it became the island’s main cash crop and as a result the economy changed dramatically. The French East India Company brought in slaves and indentured labour to work on the newly established coffee plantations. This resulted in a big increase of the slave population so much so that in 1735 there were only 1873 ‘whites’ and 7664 slaves, 76% of which were from Madagascar, 14.4 % from Africa and 9.6% from India.
For Illustrative Purposes Only
Despite an official ban on slavery, the French brought in many slaves and treated them in a manner designed to make them revolt. A series of uprisings and minor rebellions later, the island’s governance passed directly to France in 1764. The coffee was ultimately replaced by sugarcane as the main cash crop.
For Illustrative Purposes Only
The labor force needed on the sugarcane plantations was also supplied by slaves from Mozambique and Madagascar. The slave population continued to grow and in between 1773 to 1810 about 50,000 more slaves arrived in Reunion.
The Other Islands Controlled by the French
The French East India Company, whilst in the process of developing the coffee plantations in Réunion, progressively extended their domination to some of the other islands in the south west of the Indian Ocean. In 1715 they acquired Mauritius in order to establish a military port to defend Réunion for any possible enemies. In 1725 they also took over the island of Rodrigues. The two islands did not have established population and, in order to satisfy their colonial needs, the French East India Company introduced men and women from the Réunion and it is therefore not surprising that we see in all these islands numerous common cultural elements with slight local variations. One of these elements include the sega ancient.
The Social Framework in which the sega ancient was born
The plantations were not only a place where crops, especially coffee and sugar were produced, but also a type of social institution under the control of landlords or masters who, by applying the Code Noir, had total power over the slaves. The Code Noir was a decree originally passed by France’s King Louis XIV in 1685 that defined the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire and dictated the economic and legal relationships between a slave and his or her master. For the slaves, who were forbidden to form groups for any activity and to mix with other slaves from other plantations, it was like living in a concentration camp.
It was in this social structure, based on the plantation environment and in the camps of the slaves, that the first form of ‘sega’ was born. I will call this ‘ Sega Ancien’ and it is from this sega that the moutya was born.
The three elements that contributed to the birth of the séga ancien
There were three elements that contributed towards the birth of the sega ancien. These were a common language or patoi, the Créole, a particular music and an original dance.
The Créole Patois
The créole as a patoi was born as a response to the need for communication between the slaves and their masters and among the slaves themselves, bearing in mind that they were from different countries and different tribes. The only common denominator was French , which was the language of the master. They consequently bastardised the French and added bits of their own and attempt to make themselves understood.
The music and dance
The sega ancien, as music and dance, has been described by several travellers who were able to observe it during their stays in Mauritius in the 18th century . Below is a text from Louis de Freycinet, dating from 1817, that contains the enumeration of the main characteristics of sega ( chéga or chéga ) namely:
- It is a music composed by slaves;
- The melody originates in Mozambique or Madagascar.
- That the fundamental musical instrument is the tamtam that gives the rhythm;
- it is sung with words in Creole that Freycinet analyzes as being “ a kind of patois invented by the Blacks who, not being able to bend to our syntax, to pronounce our difficult words and to grasp the proper value of some of our expressions, disguised them in their own way ” ;
How did the Sega Ancient get its name?
The exact source of the sega ancient is not clear and can only be speculated on. Its verbal root may be the chega’, tiéga or ‘tchéga’ which is a Bantu root meaning ‘ play’, ‘ dance’, ‘laugh’….and it resembled the ‘chica’ performed by the slaves in Brazil, Haiti, Martinique. One of the characterisitcs of the chega’, tiéga or ‘tchéga’ was that the ladies would pull or curl up their skirts which is typical of the current moutya or sega modern.
The first attestation of the term comes from Ile de France in 1770, under the form tschiega . Of an early form of the term, de Freycinet writes:
“The Blacks like music very much. They compose … little tunes that are almost always filled with melancholy expression and melodies pleasing to even the most highly trained European ear. These tunes are generally referred to as chega or tchega.” (de Freycinet 1827: the voyage on which this information was collected took place in 1817)
Some say that tchega originated from Madagascar where it is linked to the ‘famadihana‘, a Merina death ritual. This ritual also known as ‘the turning of the bones’ whereby the people would bring forth the bodies of their ancestors from the family crypts and rewrap them in fresh cloth, then dance with the corpses around the tomb to live music. Some also say that it was used during séance sessions as a catalyst to enter in a trance and communicate with their dead ancesters.
Others say that the tchega is closely related to the fandango which was danced in the 17th century in Spain and Portugal. It is also proposed that it is related to the Indo-Portuguese word sega meaning harvest and that the dance may have been originally a harvest celebration dance.
In the next post we will discuss the other music genres, that were born out of the Sega Ancien and how they spread into the Indian Ocean Islands of Seychelles, Reunion, Mauritius and Rodrigues .
Sources:
The Seychelles ‘moutya’ as a theatre prototype and historical record- By Penda Choppy
Attitudes to slavery and race in Seychellois Creole oral literature- By Penda Theresia Choppy
Le moutya à l’épreuve de la modernité Seychelloise : Pratiquer un genre musical emblématique dans les Seychelles d’aujourd’hui (océan Indien) –Marie-Christine Parent
European slave routes in the Indian Ocean- Aparajita Biswas
Creolisation of language and culture- Robert Chaudenson
Seychelles News Agency
Ministry for Youth, Sports and Culture, Seychelles
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