Tiloun

Inspired by the traditional maloya music of his homeland, Tiloun first became a star in his hometown of Saint-Denis, Réunion, then reached a larger audience with albums like his 2008 debut, Dé Pat Ater. He was born as "Jean-Michel Ramoune" on December 23, 1967, and raised in Réunion, a French-controlled island in the Indian Ocean. Mentored by local musicians like Frimin Viry, Alain Peters, and Danyel Waro, he developed a multicultural brand of world music that was influenced by the native sounds of Madagascar, Africa, and South America. Although he performed local shows, Tiloun largely focused on his duties as a family man and only agreed to record an album after friends and family urged him to do so. Accompanied by instruments like harp and kayamb, he recorded the 11-song debut album Dé Pat Ater, which was released in 2008. Dé Pat Ater increased his recognition not only in Réunion, but also in France, where maloya had been rising in popularity since the mid-1970s. A second album, Kaz In Poz, followed in 2011 and featured 14 new songs. Tiloun toured throughout the mid-2010s, often accompanied by a band whose instruments included flute, bobre, djembe, and valiha, and released the album Konfidans in 2018. Now a gold-certified musician in France, where songs like 2011's "Ti Matant" and 2018's "Ô Maloya" had become classics of the Creole repertoire, he suffered a fatal heart attack on July 5, 2020, dying at the age of 52.