Christine Salem sings dangerous tunes that rouse the spirits and challenge the authorities – which means that her shows are as controversial as they are spellbinding. The rousing deep-voiced singer from Reunion Island – the multi-ethnic French province in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar – performs maloya. The once-banned, African-influenced music of the Creole descendants of slaves who worked the sugar plantations, maloya is a blues-like music rooted in the work songs and chants of the island’s African slaves. Rising up from a troubled childhood on the streets of Saint-Denis, Salem has become the greatest living champion of maloya, infusing the trance-inducing blend of voices and percussion with fresh inspiration and contemporary influences.