Sega tipik, to the sound of the ravanne

It all begins with fire. Before playing, the ravanne is warmed near the flames to tune it. Then a soloist sounds the call of the ravanne, and people gather around the musicians. Next comes the song, often improvised, with simple, repeated words, answered by a chorus. Finally the dance, taken up by the whole gathering and punctuated by shouts that spur it on. Such, in its traditional form, is sega tipik, which Mauritians also call sega ravanne or traditional sega.

Sega tipik rests on three instruments, and on them alone. The ravanne is a large frame drum, some sixty centimetres in diameter and five thick. The musician sits on the ground, or kneels on one knee and wedges the instrument against the other leg. One hand strikes the centre with full force or the rim with varied strokes, while the other, resting on the top of the frame, holds it steady and lets fly small sharp taps known as “fwet”, the whip. Ravanne players do not all play the same thing: the first drum sets the tempo, while the others play on the rim to draw out a high-pitched sound.

The maravanne is a rectangular box, made of cane flowers, wood or iron and filled with seeds, which is shaken horizontally, from left to right. The triyang, lastly, is a triangle: a bent rod of steel or iron, open at one end, struck with another rod. Guitar and bongo are sometimes added today, but the foundation remains these three instruments.

The rhythm hovers between binary and ternary, with a syncopated effect. The songs, in a minor key, gradually speed up. When the singer launches the syllables “ala e o tile lae”, the dancers make ready to enter the circle formed around the ravanne players, and the tempo races.

AI-generated image

A dance without contact

People dance in groups or in couples, inside the circle formed by the musicians and the gathering, without ever touching. The women hold their skirts in one hand, move their hands and hips and travel in small steps. In performances, the female dancers wear long, full skirts over petticoats, often white, and the men rolled-up trousers, a colourful shirt and a straw hat, in memory of what their ancestors wore. The singer improvises in Creole, sometimes mixed with other languages, about love, hardship and the worries of everyday life. The choreography often acts out the meaning of the song.

Sega tipik is the legacy of the enslaved population, and was born in the colonial society of Isle de France. It is first mentioned in the 1770s by the traveller Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, under the name “tschiega”, and De Freycinet describes it in 1827. Under slavery, it was a means of expressing physical pain and moral repression, a cry to rise above the misery of a confiscated freedom, but also nostalgia for forgotten lands and a longing for joy. Its origins are African and Malagasy, its adaptation Mauritian.

After abolition, it was long regarded as deviant behaviour. At the end of the nineteenth century, in the coastal villages where former slaves and liberated Africans had settled, far from the plantations, it became a backyard music, withdrawn into private life, played in the evening in front of the house or the shop. The turning point came on 24 October 1964: that evening, in the village of Le Morne, the “Nuit du séga” gave sega tipik its first major public event. The country discovered Ti-Frer, then aged 64, singing “Fidelia” and “Roseda”. Other figures followed, such as Michel Legris and Fanfan.

AI-generated image

A heritage of humanity

In 2014, sega tipik was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It is described there as an emblematic art of the Creole community, one that reflects the diversity of Mauritian society and crosses barriers of culture and class. It is learnt through participation and imitation, and the making of the instruments is passed on through informal apprenticeship. Mauritius has four inscribed elements: sega tipik in 2014, Geet-Gawai, folk songs in Bhojpuri, in 2016, the sega tambour of Rodrigues in 2017, and the sega tambour of the Chagos in 2019.

The state sustains its transmission. In 2026, for Sega Day, the Ministry of Arts and Culture brought together children aged 4 to 17 at the Résidence Mangalkhan for a ravanne workshop, and each went home with an instrument. “Sega is much more than music: it is our identity, our history and our pride,” the minister said. On 1 February 2026, the national ceremony for the abolition of slavery, at the foot of Le Morne, made room for the evolution of sega, a cultural expression born of that history.

Today it can be heard at family celebrations, at festivals, at national commemorations and in hotels. The Festival Kreol, launched in 2006, gives it pride of place. In December 2024, its nineteenth edition included an evening of sega jazz at Trou d’Eau Douce, and at the opening, at Le Morne, a ravanne was presented to each of the officials present, as the instrument that best embodies the Creole spirit.