Biography
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Born
10 March 1952
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Born In
Saint-Denis, Arrondissement of Saint-Denis, Reunion
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Died
12 July 1995 (aged 43)
Alain Péters was a poet and musician from the French owned Reunion Island, 340 miles east of Madagascar. He was an icon and master of the traditional music of Reunion Island, the maloya.
From the age of thirteen he began to play in a ball orchestra and then embarked on the bubbling of the hippie and disco years with bands with evocative names such as The Lords, Pop Decadence, Satisfaction. Towards the end of the 1970s there was the decisive meeting with another Reunion poet, Jean Albany and the adoption of Creole as the language of writing and music of the island, Maloya. Péters then founded a new group, Carrousel, with a repertoire nourished by traditional rhythms and more modern influences. The adventure will last only a year: the death of his father throws him a little more into alcohol. The group breaks up and Alain plunges into marginality.
Using and abusing zamal (the local herb) and alcohol, he lived as a half-tramp singing his misery and deep sadness at random encounters. A melancholic voice, a very rhythmic guitar playing on a takamba, small Sahelian guitar, bittersweet texts sung in Creole characterize his songs. Some recordings from this period remain. We owe them to Jean Marie Pirot, a passionate teacher who, in 1981, improvised himself as a recording studio director. For a year, in his apartment, he had the patience (the sessions never lasted very long) to capture a dozen wonders – track after track, because Péters plays all the instruments.
He died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 43. "Alain, he is immortal," says Danyel Waro with simplicity. He left a lot of beautiful things. It is a poetic and musical value. He is someone I respect greatly. He is a rebel who could not fit into reality. He was a very common and unusual person at the same time. He sang of his reality, his abyss. He was a vagabond. He has no age. I know it's been dead for a long time, but it continues to be in us."
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