Also known as Tintin, Refesse is a cultural guardian and truth teller who speaks for the voiceless. He breathes life into silenced memories, and his work connects the living to the dead, the visible to the invisible and the beating of the drum to the beating of the heart. His work, Solilokèr, blends Creole lyrics with cello strings to speak of colonial pain, fractured memory, and silenced history. It is his artistic mission to modernise and reclaim ‘maloya’, a traditional music form and dance of Réunion Island with roots in the island’s African and Malagasy heritage, often used for remembrance and protest.
