Customer Reviews

Island of Ghosts

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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Rossy produced this album to be a soundtrack for a PBS Nature show about Madagascar. It is a delight from an artistic point of view. All of these songs has a certain quality of quiet, calm and peacefullness to it. The deliberate use of many uniquely Malagasy instruments and tunes makes it sound very unique. These are all very good songs and pass my ( high) standard. My favorites are Madagasikara, Kila, Mazava Atsinanana, Midona, May, Salegy, Betsiboka and Soa for their appeal to save the endangered species of Madagascar and the awareness that they long to instill in the Malagasy people that the forest is a natural treasure worth protecting. "Dia maninona" is a personal favorite especially when I encounter some narrow-minded people in different parts of the world who think that their way of doing things is the only way... Rossy and I would just sing this song and my anger will go away: "Angaha ny Mokon-dohanareo irery eto ambonin'ny tany no tsy maintsy tohaina. Fa raha mba ny hafa no miteny, vola bôritr'izy ireny ka mangina fa tsy ilaina"

Dewdrops in the rainforest... an absolute masterpiece; haunting melodies and heartbreaking songs. No need to understand the lyrics here, the message will come across anyway. Also, production-wise this is fantastic, the traditional and modern elements blend together beautifully. This has been one of my favourites for well over 10 years now; the world would be a better place if everyone could listen to this once in a while. Seriously!

I find Rossy Island of Ghosts an amazing production from the beggining to the end. It is a well assemble piece of music, I would said a masterpiece for music lovers to enjoy.

This album starts with a song of jaw-dropping beauty, "Madagasikara", which any band from any country would be happy to have written. It begins with a solemn synthesizer part and quickly moves into an accordian-based salegy dance beat with massed voices and group hand-claps. (Salegy is a 12/8 beat with the emphasis on the second note in each triplet).

This music was originally the soundtrack to a documentary about Madagascar. While the first three songs are dance songs performed by the entire band, most of the rest is mood pieces. Soundtrack music. Of these, a highlight is "Mitopa", which sounds like the Malagasy equivalent of something Fairport Convention might do.

All of you out there should know that if you go anywhere a REAL WORLD recording, you are buying something that Peter Gabriel has personally chosen as a favorite for whatever reason he may have. And particularly if you don't like mr. Gabriel's music you might want to steer clear of these records (if you belong to a numbnut fleet of jackasses which unfortunately seem to be invading our world from teenageville or some such place), if you have - on the other hand- a mind of your own, personally I think that Peter has made some amazing choices as to what is music in a Real World sense, and frankly if you haven't then who needs you anyway, the label has (thank whatever entity you suscribe to) survived perfectly whithout the masses flocking to it, so bottom line is Rossy's "Island of Ghosts" is as perfect a representation of its time and place in the world as your going to get and on top of it all of you "professional musicians and reviewers and writers" can just swallow your words!!!