Lianes – Les Malavoi, 1974

🎻🎹🇲🇶🎶🌎 Lianes, Malavoi’s second album, was released in 1974. The group, founded five years earlier on the initiative of Mano Césaire, was already a great success. Paul Rosine is on keyboards, and the violins – the band’s real signature – are played by the leader himself, alongside Christian de Negri. With Lianes, Malavoi asserts a resolutely Latin identity. Biguines rub shoulders with guajira, bolero and mérengué, carried by the historic rhythm of Denis Dantin and Marcel Rémion. Most of the tracks are original compositions, brought to life by the intertwined voices of Raphaël Rimbaud and Ralph Thamar. This is where the Malavoi sound comes into its own, a subtle alchemy of inventive string arrangements and jazz influences, elegantly modernising traditional West Indian rhythms. Under the name Les Malavoi, the group began the road to international recognition that would come in the 1980s.