Below are the CD liner notes prepared by the producer (Sean Whittaker). For the full-length version of the story, visit the World Music Network website.

  'The music of Madagascar combines the spirituality of Oriental music, the rhythms of African music, and the intellectualism of European music.' Legendary Malagasy guitarist Etienne Ramboatiana ('Bouboul')

I'm not sure what it is about the music of Madagascar that I find so intriguing. There's just something about the way it seeps into you, be it from an old man on a street corner hunched over his battered accordion, or from a troupe of young kabosy players wandering around a village market. If you spend a little time in the towns and Malagasy countryside, you realize that music is everywhere and that its expression and beauty can reach across cultural boundaries. It is strange, then, also to realize that good recordings are fairly hard to come by in Madagascar, and that there are few (if any) good venues for acoustic traditional music in the capital city, Antananarivo (or Tana for short). The Vakoka project grew from these elements, with a few people who wanted to see just what would happen if you threw the country's best traditional musicians together for almost two months and pressed 'record'. The result is, I think, something that is greater than the sum of all its parts. Although it only scratches the surface of Madagascar's full musical range, it captures an elusive feeling, similar to what you might experience, say, walking through a village market. But the road from that first idea to the recording you now hold in your hands was as windy as the worn footpaths that meander their way through Madagascar's red-hued landscape.

Dwarfed by mainland Africa to its west, Madagascar is surprisingly large - measuring 1600 kilometres from tip to tail, it is the fourth-largest island in the world. Although still the subject of some debate, it is generally believed that Madagascar was first settled over 1500 years ago by Malayo/Polynesian travellers from Indonesia, who brought with them Arabian and African influences drawn from their extensive travels. In the years since, Madagascar has absorbed travellers and migrant populations from India, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The country now consists of eighteen tribes, each distinct in their cultural heritage and beliefs, but joined together by a sense of place and a common language (albeit with many dialects).

In ecological terms, Madagascar's isolation has spawned one of the world's most diverse ecosystems: more than eighty per cent of all the plants or animals found in Madagascar are found nowhere else in the world. In cultural terms, the island's people have evolved a musical heritage that is every bit as diverse and unique. I once asked Ian Anderson, the founder and editor of fRoots magazine, about this and he told me: 'What makes the music of Madagascar unique is that very thing - quite often you can't figure out what planet you're on. There's something about islands anyway where it's almost like the music is "cooked" in this really intense pot with the lid on … and I think that Madagascar cooked it up more than most!'

I first travelled to Madagascar in 1993 as a volunteer on a project to build windmills. I was originally supposed to stay for one year, but ended up staying for five - I'm still not quite sure how. In that time I listened to traditional music when I could, but found surprisingly little played on the radio or in clubs. It seemed that much of the music was trying to be more Western than Malagasy. Friends told me that it hadn't always been this way: back in the 1950s and 1960s, Malagasy National Radio made an effort to play traditional music and, by most accounts, there was a 'Golden Age' and celebration of this rich heritage. But the following decades saw an emergence of Western pop music and a gradual decline in the perceived value of music that was 'Made in Madagascar', particularly among the youth. Fortunately, the 1980s and 1990s saw a resurgence in 'roots-based' music as a number of excellent bands such as Tarika, D'Gary and Jaojoby made recordings that earned widespread international recognition, and made considerable inroads in the domestic market. But still it was next to impossible for traditional musicians to earn a living through their craft.

I returned to Madagascar in December 2002 on a sabbatical, with a little more time on my hands to 'scratch the itch' that had caught me years before. I found that little had changed. I looked for music wherever I could, and along the way met a number of musicians whose work I knew. They all told me a similar story - 'There's nowhere for us to play because people in clubs do not want to hear traditional music.' One of the musicians was Seta Ramaroson, a phenomenal woodwind player whom I had seen before in concerts at the outdoor Antsahamanitra amphitheatre. Seta was, and is, something of a local celebrity, with a gentle demeanour and a tendency to get easily excited when conversation turns to music, as it always does. For several years, Seta had been trying to convince the Ministry of Culture that a cultural archive project was needed - teams of Malagasy ethnomusicologists roving the countryside for several years, recording and documenting the country's musical and dance traditions. The budget that Seta needed was far beyond the means of the government, however, and he was forced to look elsewhere for funds.

It was after seeing Seta and two friends play a 'gig' for an aerobics class(!) that I decided to take a more proactive approach to finding live music. I found a sympathetic soul in Nathalie, the Malagasy owner of the Grill de Rova, a restaurant in the shadow of the old Queen's Palace. We arranged to have the Grill host a show, featuring Seta, Fanaiky and Andry playing roots-based musical improvisation. That first gig, on 12February 2003, was breathtaking - improvisation unlike any I'd heard before - and the small audience watched in rapt silence. On the basis of this success, we turned the show into a biweekly event, with a simple formula. We paid three or four musicians from different parts of the country to play whatever music they wanted, with only two stipulations: it had to be original and it had to have fanahy Gasy (Malagasy soul). The so-called 'Rova Sessions' gained momentum with each show, and after only a month we started getting national press and audiences of more than a hundred people, Malagasy and foreigners alike, crammed into the intimate confines of Nathalie's restaurant. Each show was unique, and each time I was amazed that all these crazy styles and techniques could come from the same island. After one particularly good show, Seta asked me the fateful question: 'Why can't we put this stuff on a CD?'

I remember asking Stéphane de Comarmond, the owner of Studio Mars, why he didn't record the kind of music played at the Rova Sessions. His response was terse: 'I can't sell it - not without adding in a synthesizer or drum machine.' Standing there in the studio, looking around, a thought suddenly occurred to me: What if I were to rent the studio, bring together some of the Rova Session musicians, and get them to record an album? The thought snowballed from there. What if we were to sell the album and use the proceeds to fund Seta's cultural archive project? At the time it seemed to make sense… apart from the fact that I knew nothing about producing and marketing music (in fact, that was the first time I had ever been in a recording studio). But I realized immediately that the only way this idea could fly would be to find people to guide the artistic content of the project. The first person that came to mind was, of course, Seta - he would be perfect - but I knew that he would need someone else to work with him. Who that someone else turned out to be could not have surprised me more.

I can vividly remember the first time I met Hanitrarivo ('Hanitra') Rasoanaivo. It was at a party in Antananarivo. I recognized her from her wonderful work as leader of Tarika, a group she had formed in 1994 that drew its inspiration from Madagascar's myriad traditional styles. Tarika went on to become the country's most famous musical export and in 2001 was named as one of the ten best bands in the world by Time magazine (alongside U2 and Radiohead!). Just recently she had taken time off touring to build Antshow, a remarkable cultural centre that could serve as a creative home for musicians from all over the country. A few days after our first meeting we went out for lunch, and I asked her what she thought of my recording idea. Her first response was, 'That's a great idea. Would I be able to contribute a song or two?' I almost passed out. You see, up to that point I had thought that the project would be a small thing. But when she said she wanted to participate, I realized that this could potentially be something much bigger. I quickly agreed, and asked, moreover, if she would be willing to be the project's co-artistic director along with Seta. She agreed, and I doubt you would be reading this now if she hadn't. It was really Hanitra's idea to 'go big' with Vakoka - to try and, in her words, 'give these musicians the worldwide audience they deserve'.

Over the next two weeks, Seta, Hanitra and I met several times at Antshow to work out the details of the project. How would it work? Who would be involved? Where would it happen? The last question was easy: Antshow had been built for just this kind of thing, and we decided that that's where the three weeks of rehearsals would take place. As for the subsequent three-week recording and mixing session, we opted for Studio Mars. Besides the fun involved in saying, 'I'm going to Mars,' it was pretty much the only studio in Madagascar with the equipment necessary to make a world-class recording. As for how, Hanitra suggested having a core group of composers, each of whom would be given the job of developing two original songs during the course of the project. In doing so, they could draw on the talents of either the other composers or a pool of session musicians. Our goal was to make a recording that reflected the diverse backgrounds of the composers, while affording them the chance to influence each other as they composed new music. It was our hope that this would give the recording a unity and cohesiveness. With that decided, we then turned our attention to the question of who. Together we came up with a 'dream team' of the best musicians from a variety of backgrounds and musical styles. Fantastic! With all these pieces in place, all we had to do then was make it happen.

The first meeting of the musicians at Antshow came one month after the project's inception. I felt positively giddy as I looked around the table and thought of what might emerge from this eclectic group. After lunch that day we gave the musicians a chance to 'strut their stuff'. While many of them knew of each other, most had never played together and the afternoon was intended to give them a chance to demonstrate their styles and perhaps to get some ideas for their songs. It obviously worked well, because Vakoka's first song was actually born in this session. Gabin, the older statesman of Antandroy music, grabbed the microphone and started singing, 'Salama, salama, salama ianareo jiaby' ('Hello and welcome to you all'). Within ten minutes we had the makings of Vakoka's lead track, 'Salama' - just like that!

One week later, the rehearsals started with seven composers (Hanitra, Seta, Monja, Gabin, Haja, Djôma and Lalasoa) and six session musicians (Donné, Dieu-Donné, Teta, Damy, Fanaiky and Panà). For the next three weeks, this group turned Antshow into a creative hive of activity. In one room there would be a composer and two session musicians quietly working out the melody to a tune, while elsewhere there would be a gang of musicians piled in one place, laughing and playing off of each other. All the while, Seta and Hanitra would be running from one room to the next, providing help to those who needed it (some had never recorded a song before), and encouragement and inspiration to others who had stalled. I called it 'organized spontaneity' when things were going well, 'herding cats' when they weren't. All throughout Antshow, it was like a living musical museum. Walking up the hardwood stairs I hear the strains of a fiddle and guitar coming from the library - Donné and Teta are there working with Hanitra on her song 'Era'. Around the corner in the Rivotra room, Seta and Dieu-Donné are trying to pin down the melody for Seta's song 'Lazao'. Now down two flights of stairs to the Antshow studio, and Haja and Fanaiky are working on the solo for Haja's 'Maromaso'. And on the patch of grass six metres from the studio, Gabin, Damy and Monja are resting in the sun, warming themselves against one of the cool mornings that envelop the capital in winter.

But the rehearsals were not without a few hiccups. Musicians vanished at inopportune times to get cigarettes; Panà had a brief stint in the hospital with a twisted ankle after falling out of a bush taxi; our sound engineer didn't show up for days; and Gabin kept taking every single musician in the project, saying that he needed all of them in order to rehearse his compositions. During that time I was told that one of the musicians was prone to spirit possession, and that another insisted on sacrificing a goat when the project was over. Meanwhile, Lalasoa frequently had to sprint home to feed his chickens, and Seta worried over his wife, who was eight months pregnant. All the while the poor musicians had to cope with my use of the Malagasy language, and my occasional tendency to mangle the vocabulary.

Through it all we started to realize there were some real gems forming in our midst. Songs that started as only a twinkling (like 'Salama') suddenly blossomed into beautiful arrangements that mixed influences and styles never heard before. And it was fun to watch how the musicians interacted and played off each other. For some, playing musical styles from all over the island came easily, whereas for others these new rhythms and song structures were something altogether new.

Going into the second and third weeks of rehearsal, I started to see the toll the creative process was taking on the musicians and artistic directors. On a number of occasions I would show up at Antshow early, and Hanitra would drift down from her room on the top floor, her face saying in no uncertain terms that she had been up all night, listening to the demos, writing notes and thinking of things, major and minor, that needed attention. Moments later Seta would appear, instruments tucked under his arm, his face drawn from the past night's work. At several times I feared that Vakoka's artistic directors, the heart and soul of the project, would just crumble from exhaustion. But somehow they kept going, and I remembered something that Etienne Ramboatiana, the legendary Malagasy guitarist, once told me: 'To study music is to study the art of patience.'

After three weeks of rehearsals the songs were in good shape, and we moved to Studio Mars for recording and mixing. The first week in the studio was an adjustment from the way the project had been operating. While in Antshow everything ran in parallel with songs developing all over the place, in the studio each song had to be slowly built up, piece by piece, with only one (or maybe two) instruments in the main recording space at the same time. The signals had to be clean, and we couldn't have the sound of one instrument bleeding into the mic of another. For the same reason, we couldn't have a musician singing and playing at the same time, or moving around too much while recording, and for a musician who has played only for ceremonies and dances that's a tall order. (If you've ever seen a Malagasy group in full swing, you'll know why.)

Yet it was fascinating to watch the songs slowly build, each layer adding a colour that enhanced the last. First came the rhythm tracks, then the bass and melody, then the choir voices, and finally the lead vocals and any details that helped to round out the song (in one case, we used the Studio Mars mailbox as a drum). All through, Seta and Hanitra worked tirelessly with the writers to bring each song to life, looking to achieve that elusive balance between technical correctness and spontaneous looseness. After two weeks in the studio we finally had all of the raw tracks down, and all that remained was to mix them together and prepare the Vakoka masters. The team worked almost around the clock on the mixes and, on 31May at 3pm, just hours before my departure from the country, Seta walked through the door of our apartment and handed me the finals. We slid the CD into the stereo and gave it a listen for the first time.

It sounded absolutely beautiful.

The album you are holding is a testament to the talent and perseverance of a remarkable group of musicians. In the end, perhaps their greatest skill is the ability to use music as a medium to communicate across cultural and geographical lines. I hope that in listening to this recording you hear their voices speak to you, and that, just for a moment, you see yourself in a Malagasy village somewhere, listening to the faint strains of an accordion or marovany as it plays along with the sounds of the country.

Sean Whittaker, April 2004