The Republic of Seychelles and Koste Seselwa

Patrick: 00:00:16

Hello and welcome to the Anthems podcast. I'm Patrick and today I'm going to try and tell you the story of a song that helps to tell the story of a nation.

The globetrotting musical journey continues, but it wouldn't be going anywhere without you. So thanks for listening and welcome to episode four, the Republic of Seychelles.

This is a show that is not going to follow a regularly scheduled release schedule until I figure out how to do the research and writing for this show correctly. Because I. I just have not yet. And it's new, but it'll be here, don't worry. Now, as I said, today is episode four, the Republic of Seychelles.

Today's anthem is coste se selwa. It is brought to us by a list of the current 54 african countries in order of largest to smallest population.

Seychelles is the very last country on that list and it earns it the fourth spot on our trip.

I'm reasonably sure that, like myself, many listeners have never heard of the nation of Seychelles, but if you are a trivia buff, there's a chance you have a bit of knowledge about it. A fun fact is that one of Seychelles Islands is the only place in the world, or actually, it may be a couple of them.

The source was unclear, but it is the only place in the world where the coco de mer grows. The tree produces the largest wild grown fruit. It's a giant coconut, weighs like 70, 80 pounds.

They're huge, called the sea coconut, the double coconut, and in certain crowds, it's the love nut. Not even kind of kidding. So be warned before you look the coco de mer up, it is very close to not safe for work and it is borderline inappropriate.

This has nothing to do with costa se selwa, so pretend there is an amazingly witty and or clever segue into you enjoying the anthem with me. Before I get into the story, because as usual, we've got to hear the thing. And this is a short song.

I will see you in less than a minute and 40 seconds. In all the recordings of this, I can't find anything that's like super good quality. It all sounds kind of old timey.

It kind of gives me the feel of people in a grandstand at a country fair. That's not what they're going for. I can tell you that without giving you a spoiler, but it is. That's how it feels to me.

And it might be another relic of my lack of musical training.

A little bit about the country, the history of Seychelles and the lead up to their anthem is an interesting story and it's a little bit different from other countries I've read about. Before we get into that, I want to place this thing on the globe because you don't know where it is. More than likely. If you do, that's great.

Get a globe or Google Maps and pull up Africa. Find Madagascar. It is the large island off the eastern coast of the continent.

Now, if you're looking at a globe, get on Google Maps, because Seychelles is almost certainly not on the globe. It's not on the one I have. It's very small.

You'll need to actually use the search to be able to locate it because knowing the capital, Victoria, is 800 miles off the east coast of Africa didn't help me figure out where it is, because Seychelles is like 155 smallish islands spread over in 800 miles range in the Indian Ocean. So it's a diffusion, a small arc. Archia. I have trouble with this word archipelago. I'm going to leave that in. It's a country.

It's geographically diffuse in ways that are very different from the part of North America I'm in. The actual land area of the islands is about 451. For comparison, Chicago in the US is 228 sq mi, so diffuse is the right description.

So is beautiful, though. Look up some photos of this place. I'm going to refer to that several times. It's an actual island paradise.

It is also largely empty because 85% of the hundred thousand or so people that live there at any given time are on two of the islands, or three of them. The largest is Mahe, and most of the rest of the people live on the two neighboring islands of Praslin and Ladige, or maybe Ladig.

My French is non existent.

da Gama. Sometime in March of: 1503

They were named the Tres Hermanos, or the three brothers in his charts, in case you don't remember Vasco da Gama. This guy literally started european colonialism by getting around the Horn of Africa and making it to India looking for christians and spices.

Da Gama was also belittled by the king of Calicut, or. Yeah, I think Calicut. I think they were a king, the king of Calicut, for not having any gold or silver as a royal gift.

And then he got angry that they were being required to pay taxes like a common traitor. And he kidnapped 20 people to get away.

For this and the straight up piracy that they resorted to heading there and back, he was rewarded a hereditary lordship and a town. As we've already heard in the story of La Dessalinian, colonialism did not improve after Vasco da Gama got the ball rolling.

people saw Seychelles was in: 1609

The next hundred or so years involve sporadic occupation of parts of Seychelles by pirates, taking advantage of the new India trade routes. That doesn't really count as people living there, I think.

As of: 1715

And in: 1742

ally formally claimed them in: 1768

Two years later, the beginnings of a settlement were established, and thereafter it was shown that a faster route to India was possible via Seychelles. Within a few years, they had established some spice cultivation, such as black pepper, cinnamon and that sort of stuff.

French Revolution happened in: 1790

It was a fairly standard thing that they drew up, and like most constitutions, it kept it okay to own people, because how could an economy possibly work without slave labor? The next 40 or so years in Seychelles are interesting enough for its own podcast, but this is not going to be.

just sort of worked out until: 1835

At that point, slavery was completely banned in the British Empire, and there had definitely been no preparation for that in the now colonial british Seychelles. And the economy of the islands completely collapsed. The islands slowly recovered, though.

Britain was actively eliminating slavery in the colonies, and part of that was raiding arab slave trading camps and liberating people from them. There is a movie in that series of events somewhere. Many of the liberated folk were relocated to Seychelles because they needed laborers.

And are we surprised that the British thought they knew what was best for some other people? Yeah, it was unfair Americans do that too.

The resettlement project that got the islands going again in an economic sense, also had the effect of making the Seychelles an incredibly diverse place. There are cultural influences from all over Africa and the french influence never really left.

n independent crown colony in: 1903

The british empire had a ton of enemies from all over the world, so they contributed to the country's diversity. Most of these folk actually just kind of fell in love with the place and the weather because it was a, you know, it was an island paradise.

Seriously, if I'm ever arrested for political crimes in my country, I want them to exiled me to the US Virgin islands. But I'm only mentioning it here because of a tie in with a future episode. The first political exile was the sultan Abdullah.

He was a sultan of a small malaysian island called Perak.

The sultan's son had a fondness for the local music in Seychelles and brought a french folk tune that he learned called La Rosalie back with him to Malaysia. And in a series of events that you'll hear about later on when I get to Malaysia, it became the national anthem.

World War one was tough on Seychelles and the war effort had the empire neglecting the more far flung colonies until they were strategically important anyway. The rich planters there agitated for rights goods and they started to get them. At some point.

ons steadily increased and in: 1939

There were no further political action until after the birth of one of our composers, David Andre. Remember how I'm actually talking about the national anthem here about this? We're getting there, I promise.

The: 1948

By: 1966

They had an anthem and a flag and everything.

But two years into the timeline, there was a coup while the president was overseas and a guy named Franz Albert Rene installed himself as the head of a white, minority ruled and ostensibly socialist government.

To be fair, there was a ton of development in the country during the rule of what is now called the People's Party, and they were, for a time, the most developed country in Africa. That said, there were years of suppression, exile, and political violence that almost always proceeds from a one party state.

As per usual, though, we're just touching on that stuff and we have to kind of breeze over the tragedy and leave that for another show on another time. But do read more about it, because maybe you will do that show.

e riding on is into the early: 1990

on of the new constitution in: 1993

That is, I'm gonna catch em up kinda how I can. They're interesting guys, and there is interesting blind spots in the information about them.

George is Payet and David Andre are two of the most famous people in the country. But as with most of the anthem creators, that doesn't mean that they're famous enough to easily find information about.

If you're an average american podcaster like me, it's doubly interesting with these two gentlemen, because they are very much alive at the time of this recording.

,: 2023

So when post pandemic was even further away than it is now in his role as chairman of the Seychelles Music association. So alive and pretty heavily involved in the country that they wrote the song for and literally watched form as they grew up.

Payette were both born in the: 1950

Georges, just based on his photograph and that he's a contemporary of this other guy. He's in his. Yeah, born in the fifties. Can't really find a date on him though.

When Georges was ten, his mother got him a guitar to help keep him from wandering off, and by the time he turned 14, all eight of the payette kids were recording music together.

ent on to form a band that in: 2013

So Georges and his and Saturn are as famous as you can be in Seychelles. Their music is not bad at all either. You should look that up too.

ry is written by them, and in: 2019

In most cases I've considered so far and have read about, there have been two guys involved in writing an anthem, and one has always been more well known than the other, or more prominent or involved in history or some way. This is not really the case for Seychelles because David and George are both easily equally famous in their country.

Like I said earlier, since the writing of Coste Sey Selwa, he's been the mayor of the capital city and is currently a high level government official. Before Mister Andre was a musician, he was a telecommunications guy that worked as a radio officer.

He was always interested in music, though, and started learning classical guitar as an exchange student to France, but was forced to return home due to unspecified political turmoil, according to David himself, later on he was afforded the chance to return to France and specialize in classical guitar.

rned to Seychelles in the mid: 1980

fication of a constitution in: 1993

At some point during the selection process, the committee approached David Georges and a third man named Antoine Azimia, because they liked parts of what all three were doing, but they didn't like any one of their ideas enough to commit to it. So they proposed that the three men work together and come up with a song that reflected all the chosen elements.

The gentleman that I've only mentioned once backed out of the proposal and he backed out of the chance to be one of the main characters in my show.

George and David, however, got together and they wrote Coste Sesalois in a single day in what they called in a correction letter to a newspaper, a beautiful house at La Plain St Andre at Au Cap on Mahe.

,: 1996

The national day, the american equivalent of Seychelles National Day, is our Independence Day Day. Now, this is definitely the shortest anthem that I've read about so far.

A long play through of the thing is maybe a minute and 40 seconds, but the authors put a lot of emotional depth into a small chronological space.

As always, I will be reading the lyrics in English, but understand that the song is written and performed in French and a Seychelles, Seychelles, Louise Creole. Given its brevity, I'm going to break form slightly and just read the entire thing. You know that this song is short, you've heard it already today.

Then I will discuss what I can about it.

Seychelles, our only motherland where we live in harmony, happiness, love and peace we give thanks to God preserve the beauty of our country, the riches of our oceans, a precious heritage for the happiness of our children live forever in unity raise our flag together for all eternity join together all Seychelles. I will get my musical thoughts out of the way right away.

As you might have guessed from my initial assessment of the song, I'm not really impressed with the choices that were made by Savatinov.

As far as his arrangement goes, there's nothing like wrong with it per se, but it's another song that's not for me and it is not going to make it onto my Google music playlist. But a bunch of national anthems are actually on there. So answers the question, are they all bad?

The anthem does present something a little bit different, though.

The few that you've heard me discuss so far were written by people that were involved in the revolutionary action of the country or written about revolutionary revolutionaries. So they were sort of like old timey in a lot of ways, but there's none of that here.

This is two contemporary musicians at the height of their powers that are doing some extremely patriotic writing about their country to let everybody know how much they love it. And there's no revolution. The british empire just kind of gave up seychelles and let them become independent.

It's obviously more complicated than that, but this is a podcast about the national anthem and not all of the formation of the country.

The song, it seems to be written with an abab rhyming scheme in the original French, but the rhyme feels a little bit forced to me with the ears of a non native speaker of French having just look at how the words are spelled. But again, I'm not a native speaker, so I'm almost certainly off base there.

They start off within the first quartet, speaking of harmony and peace and happiness, as they should, through the island's history and the extremely lucky chain of events that has followed most of it.

It's been generally untouched by humans and avoided all of our wars for the most part, and ridiculous human problems the country has had by virtue of its lack of military and its far flung iness, as essentially peaceful a run as a populated country can have. It's been common among religious people to thank their God. Doesn't surprise me that that line is in there.

It's a place that you should definitely be thankful for. Again, I will iterate that you should look pictures of it up and possibly go on vacation there.

The authors continue with something that I've not seen in any other anthems that I've researched so far, a plea to preserve the environment and the natural resources of the ocean for their children.

If this had been written even ten years earlier, I think this quartet would be very different, and there wouldn't be anything about the environment in there. The eighties were a different time.

The early nineties were, at least in my country, one of the times when we got a little bit of a blurb, like we might want to pay attention to the environment. I get it, though. The pictures of this country's untouched by man areas are pictures of stunning and pristine nature spots.

I felt like a broken record about that. They should be protected. And in Seychelles, they actually amended Article 38 of their constitution to try and do that for the people there.

The article states, in part that the state recognizes the right of every person to live in and enjoy a clean and healthy and ecologically balanced environment. End quote. It continues, but that's all the rest of it's like technical law stuff.

As a small and fairly new island nation, the country will certainly feel the effects of climate change earlier than many other countries that contributed far more to it. Now, the final verse, it feels kind of hokey to me when I read it, but it's classical national anthem stuff that we're being presented with.

They call for unity, permanents, standing with the flag, joining together with your country. The patriotic tone is unmistakable.

The brevity and the straightforwardness of the lyrics almost make me wish there were a series of historically dense lines to unpack. Because we're at the end of the show and I feel like I've talked a lot and told you. Not very much this time.

But alas, I did go into this project recognizing that sometimes we will encounter some intensely mundane stuff, like fantastically mundane. And this is kind of our first example of something that feels rather astoundingly normal.

But there will be other episodes and there will be ridiculous things. Hopefully you will hear them.

The writing and recording and production for the show are done by me, and I also wrote and played the intro and outro music, and I use the music with my permission. Unless otherwise noted, the anthems that I play are public domain stuff.

This one is my sources and other tasty bits I found are contained in the show notes. The most direct way to get to those show notes is@anthemspodcast.com you can find me on Facebook and WhatsApp.

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