Mersi

Réunionese singersongwriter Christine Salem should really be a huge international star by now. But despite a clutch of solid releases with her band Salem Tradition and, since 2010, as a solo artist she has never quite received the A-list props she deserves. Her latest album, Mersi, should change all that. Here she collaborates with virtuoso French violinist Frédéric Norel, whose beauteous lines weave through Salem's maloya – the African-influenced music of the Creole descendants of the island's slaves – in ways organic, and utterly elevating.

All thundering percussion, howling Creole vocals and trance-inducing chants, maloya music feels like it's erupting from the centre of the earth. Salem's rich, deep voice has long brought her ancestors' pain and history into focus, and does so again on tracks including ‘Mama Africa’ and the chanson-flecked ‘Je Dis Non’. Her themes are current: an English-language peace anthem, ‘Why War’, soars on a bed of guitars and percussion. ‘Tyinbo’, with Jacky Malbrouk on rouler drum and vocal harmonies, pleads for the cessation of domestic violence in a track all the more remarkable for the fact that maloya is predominantly sung by men. Elsewhere, Salem variously accompanies herself on guitar, harmonica and kayamb (a cane tray filled with seeds) as her band fold in elements of rock, blues and folk and Norel's violin adds welcome luminosity. The closing title-track, a glorious a cappella paean to maloya, is a masterstroke. Heaven and earth, then, together.