Albums Of The Week: Bobo & Behaja | Aia Haja?
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2026-02-19
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Isolated from the rest of the group at the front of the plane taking us from Budapest to Zurich, Behaja left without waiting for us, confidently following a group of travellers who had gone to catch their connecting flight,” recalls one of the Franco-Malagasy guitarist’s bandmates — a list that includes vocalist Ekaly, also saxophonist Maxime Bobo, bassist François Rosenfeld and drummer Gérard Rakotoniaina. “Lost in switzerland’s largest airport, he had no phone and he speaks neither French, English nor German.
“After an hour and a half of searching and several public announcements to the thousands of travellers, the airport police, initially uncooperative, finally found him at the end of a corridor. Finally reunited, we managed to catch the transfer to Paris at the last minute, but some of the suitcases — checked in hastily — were loaded into the hold of a different plane.
“A few days later, we set off to record our first album, deprived of much of our equipment — horn loudspeakers, karaoke amplifiers and homemade effects pedals that reproduce the sonorities of the ‘bal-poussière’ ceremonies of south-western Madagascar — which the airline sent us after a week’s wait. So it was only during the last two days in the studio that the conditions were right for recording the tracks for this album.
“The repertoire, largely created in Madagascar and then performed on stage during a European tour of some 30 concerts, is based on the new rhythms, structures, instrumental and vocal techniques of contemporary tsapiky, of which Behaja is one of the most emblematic musicians.”