You see that picture to the left? All Mauritian. Aside from the dozen albums I’ve received digitally, those are the tapes and CDs that people have lent me or that I’ve picked-up over the last couple weeks. Obviously I can’t afford to buy 30 albums for every X country week, so these kinds of contributions are invaluable for Benn loxo. Thank you!

On that note we’ll start Benn loxo’s second Mauritius Week with an album I got in a little Amazon envelope yesterday: Otentikk Street Brothers‘ 2007 release, Revey Twa.

OSB Crew, as they’re known, are easily the most popular group amongst Mauritius’ younger generation. Their reggae-hiphop-ragga-sega fusion is wildly popular on the island.

Unfortunately I missed their live show in Paris a few months ago but I’ll try to catch them next time they’re in town. Were any of you at that show?

You can grab the album at emusic or over at Amazon.

The title of the first track, Ki Si Sa Sa, reminds me of a bit of African popular music history: did you know that the name of the dance, “kwassa kwassa”, came from the French, “c’est quoi ça ?” In English that means “what’s that?”, as in, “what are you doing with your feet?” So obvious, but I wonder if Vampire Weekend, who are directing tons of traffic to this site lately, knew that..

Otentikk Street Brothers – Ki Si Sa Sa
Otentikk Street Brothers – Kreolite (Dub version)