Connecting with traditional Creole music with Mauritian NGO Abaim
In February 2025, I spent time with ABAIM, a community and cultural organisation in Mauritius focused on Creole music, storytelling, and intergenerational learning. Founded by Alain Muneean, ABAIM plays a vital role in keeping traditional songs, instruments, and oral histories alive.
While I was there, I joined lessons and workshops, spent time learning from Alain as well as director Marousia Bouvery, members and children, and got to see and play historic traditional instruments, including some made by hand in the traditional methods by the children and members of Abaim as part of the group’s mission to keep alive the historic ways of fabricating instruments developed by ancestors. I returned to the UK with some of these to keep practising on, and which now form part of how I work with sound, music, history, and memory. It was also an honour to be invited to speak to the children about the research I do, the connections between Seychelles, Mauritius and the other islands and even share some of the traditional songs that I know.
Connecting with Abaim was also a way of continuing the learning I began with my late mentor, Norbert Salomon, who put me on the path of studying traditional instruments and shared with me his life’s work researching Creole music in Seychelles. After his death in 2024, I’ve felt a strong responsibility to honour and carry forward what he taught me. Being at ABAIM helped me stay close to that lineage and explore how different Creole islands hold, share, and protect their heritage through sound and music.
