Gilbert Pounia, the charismatic lead singer and founder of Ziskakan, has only been to Madagascar once in his life. But one visit was enough to trigger the idea of creating some kind of cultural 'rapprochement' with the neighbouring isle (located less than a thousand kilometres off the coast of Reunion Island). The occasion finally arose when Serge Urlentin, a former football player who had already been involved on Ziskakan's 2007 album Banjara, showed Pounia a handful of songs he had written, fusing Creole poetry with a smattering of Malagasy words he picked up during his youth. Urlentin ended up penning over half the songs on Madagascar and his work is presented in the accompanying CD booklet in both its original form and as a French translation.

Urlentin's richly evocative songs, where every single word appears to conjure up an image, struck an instant chord with Pounia, awakening old memories of his own. He, in turn, penned his own songs, drawing on several larger-than-life characters he had encountered during his time as a social worker. On the poignant Léone Claire ek Augustin Mourougapin Pounia pays tribute to two homeless people he met on the streets of Saint-Denis in the 1960s. And on Moin mi domand pardon he celebrates a Mauritian street singer by the name of Henry Madoré who proffered young Gilbert a guitar one day and urged him to "Play boy, play!"

On every track on Madagascar the musicians used the song lyrics as a starting-point for the music. Apparently, Pounia had originally intended Ziskakan's new album to be a purely acoustic work, but his collaboration with producer Erick Benzi (renowned for his work with Yannick Noah and Jean-Jacques Goldman) changed all that. Benzi has put his own modern stamp on Madagascar, leaving the profound folk influence to Ziskakan's maloya firmly intact, but injecting more of a feisty rock guitar edge on tracks such as the excellent Machokay.

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 Listen to an extract from Madagascar

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