Menwar: Keeping Sega Alive

Full of emotion and love of life, Sega is a traditional form of Mauritian music first brought to the island by slaves and now deeply embedded in the nation’s sonic culture. It combines folk stories sung largely in Creole and complex rhythms, achieved through instruments like the ravanne (a large goat skin drum) and the maravanne, a wooden box filled with percussive seeds. Stephano Honoré, aka Menwar, is one of Mauritius’s foremost Sega musicians and a pioneer of the fusion genre ‘seggae’. We had the pleasure of going behind the scenes at Menwar’s studio, where he told of of Sega’s diverse influences and how he uses it to capture stories of the sea.