New single Listwar Zanset ft. Emlyn of Mauritius & Putad of Taiwan

Listwar Zanset began with Emlyn writing a song influenced by the traditional Sega style of Mauritius. Sega has its roots in the slave era as the slaves from Madagascar & Africa were banned from playing music - they used the tools they worked with in the cane fields as instruments, and had to hum so their voices weren’t heard, as you can hear in the song.

Putad from the Indigenous Amis tribe of Taiwan heard the song and aligned with its meaning as her people were also removed from their custodial land because of colonization, so does Selina Leem of the Marshall Islands as her people are losing their island to sea level rise.

Hear from the Artists

Emlyn of Mauritius

Our ancestry is the seed of our life, it's something we carry in our blood whether we want it or not. Today we can only imagine how it was like to live through the hardship of slavery, so we should always keep in memory the struggle they went through for us to be free today.

Some of the slaves rebelled, escaped and died. Others endured the pain and tried their best to survive through colonisation. In this song I give them gratitude and remember the sacrificed heroes. This theme also resonates with other cultures and tribes across the world that went through colonisation. That is why Listwar Zanset united Putad and me, along with Selina and all the other musicians that played on the song.

Putad of Taiwan

When I heard the story of why Emlyn wrote Listwar Zanset, it reminded me how my ancestors were treated. Although we don’t have the slave history but we were banned from speaking our Amis language, many of our traditional songs were lost, and our custodial land was stolen from us. I am not only talking about the past. The eagerness for freedom that Emlyn expressed in the song really spoke to me.

I responded to Emlyn by adding choruses about our people and it became a song for me that, although we speak about different topics and experiences, we're sharing our past that cannot be ignored, and when we learn from the past, we see the path forward.

Once I took part in a court case fighting to save our Amis coastline — the place that I grew up, where I surf and swim, and we won. Our ocean is beautiful. I hope my son, my daughter, my grandson and granddaughter will have the same beach, never change.

Selina Leem of Marshall Islands

I am acknowledging the land, the people and their ancestors. I came to this statement reflecting on the Marshallese Proverb taught to me by my grandparents. The statement translates to ‘the turning of the tides’. My grandparents taught me that the tides are blessings for our people, because they bring the gifts and treasures that we need to sustain ourselves. They taught that it is important to give back, that is what we must do, because we would not be here today if it wasn't for those gifts and treasures —how will our actions and our decisions affect those around us? As indigenous people we acknowledge our ancestors our land, because it is from them that we get our identity, and it was very important that this be acknowledged in this song.