Firmin Viry

Who is Firmin Viry?

Firmin Viry is a Réunionese singer and musician born on 11 March 1935 in the Ligne Paradis neighborhood of Saint-Pierre, Réunion, widely regarded as one of the foremost guardians of maloya, the island's traditional Creole music rooted in the songs of enslaved and indentured plantation workers. Viry worked his entire life as a sugarcane cutter between Saint-Pierre and Le Tampon, and it was within that plantation labor world that he absorbed and developed his musical craft. At the age of twenty-three, with guidance from a Mozambican elder named Gustin Miza, he learned to build the traditional maloya instruments himself, including the bobre, roulèr, kayamb, and piker. He gave his first public performance in 1959 at the Rio cinema in Saint-Denis, at a time when Réunion's colonial-era authorities banned maloya as a subversive, politically dangerous art form associated with the island's Communist Party and its Malagasy and African-descended communities. Maloya was only officially authorized again in 1981, after which Viry's own courtyard became an informal school where younger generations came to learn the music and reconnect with their Creole identity. In recognition of his decades defending maloya and Creole culture, he received France's National Order of Merit in 1998 and was made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 2014.

Sources: Réunionnais du Monde, "VIRY Firmin" (reunionnaisdumonde.com) · Cultivanoo, "La mémoire de nos cœurs : Firmin Viry, l'âme du maloya" (cultivanoo.com) · Afrisson, "Firmin Viry" (afrisson.com)