Music of Malagasy Highlands–East

Summary

Malagasy Highlands–East is a broad listening region linking Madagascar's central highlands with the eastern coast. Highland theatrical song, bà gasy, gospel and popular music coexist with eastern repertoires whose histories and social purposes differ. Antananarivo is an important point of national circulation, but the region should not be understood as a single extension of the capital.

Hiragasy offers one especially distinctive highland practice, combining song, dance and speech. Eastern recordings from the Tamatave region instead document musical relationships with ancestral spirits and local ceremonial life. Putting these examples in the same article is a practical geographical grouping, not a claim that they form one genre or share identical audiences.

Contemporary and trending

Hiragasy remains an active performance world. Reporting on the 2025 Malagasy New Year programme at Ambohidrabiby places it alongside kabary and coordinated dance. A separate account of Rossy's Tapôlakaglady project describes the use of projected hiragasy performers synchronized with live music. These examples show different contemporary presentations of inherited resources, from ceremonial programming to technologically mediated spectacle.

National popular music adds another layer. Music In Africa's overview describes dance-oriented “tropical” music connecting coastal and highland audiences, making any simple opposition between a traditional highland public and a modern coastal one misleading. Gospel, pop and regional song continue to overlap through artists and circulation, although the available sources do not provide a current district-by-district account of their audiences.

History

Hiragasy's history is a history of public performance and communication, not only of musical style. UNESCO identifies its combination of song, dance and speech and notes the moral, civic and cultural concerns carried by lyrics. Its 2023 inscription recognizes a living practice rather than establishing when it began or measuring its popularity.

Other highland forms developed through different ensembles. The Feo Gasy recording Ramano brings guitars, voices, sodina flute and valiha together in a repertoire described through highland polyphony. On the east coast, Ron Emoff's field recordings document how music can engage with ancestral memory and rework the experience of colonial history. These contrasting sources show why regional history must attend to performance purpose and local knowledge as well as the introduction of instruments.

Genres

Hiragasy is a composite performance art: speech, movement and song contribute to a structured public presentation. Bà gasy offers another approach to highland vocal and instrumental interplay, with Feo Gasy providing a documented ensemble example. The valiha and sodina are distinct instruments whose roles should be heard within actual arrangements rather than treated as universal symbols of all Malagasy music.

The eastern material is different again. The Smithsonian release includes Betsimisaraka tromba performances on valiha, accordion-related pieces and other local ensembles, emphasizing musical relationships with ancestral practice. These recordings document specific performers and settings, not a complete account of present-day coastal popular taste. Contemporary national pop and gospel coexist with such repertoires, so neither heritage nor commercial recordings alone can represent the entire region.

Repertoire distinctions

Bà gasy — Malagasy highland song/compositional and vocal practice, with historical theatre, acoustic ensemble and related Kalon’ny fahiny repertories.

Basesa — Betsimisaraka eastern Malagasy dance/music practice and later popular transformations, related to but locally distinguished from northern Salegy.

Hiragasy — Malagasy central-highland performance combining multipart song, instrumental playing, dance and kabary oratory in community/troupe presentation.

Artists

Feo Gasy's Ramano offers a concrete route into highland ensemble music through performers including Erick Manana, Rakoto Frah and valiha players identified in the release documentation. The combination of voices, flute and strings is useful for attending to how parts interact, rather than listening only for an emblematic national instrument.

Rossy's Tapôlakaglady project provides a contemporary performance example involving hiragasy imagery and live music. The eastern archive offers another kind of entry through named practitioners such as Jean Dedier and Lepity, whose valiha performances appear on Madagascar: Spirit Music from the Tamatave Region. These selections span recording, stage production and field documentation; each preserves a different relationship between artist, community and audience.

Boundary definition and research

The approved outline combines the central highlands and eastern Madagascar, with overlap at neighbouring transitions. This is explicitly a broad first-pass frame. It preserves an important distinction between highland and coastal repertoires within the article rather than pretending that one geographical label resolves their differences.

The evidence is uneven: hiragasy and selected recorded traditions are well documented, while direct contemporary listening data for the full eastern coast remain limited. Historical field recordings establish musical practices and contexts, not present audience shares. National pop travels across the proposed divisions. The region consequently retains provisional status and should be used as a starting point for following more precise communities, ensembles and circulation routes.