Moka BOB Sound System (2025) is a sound-based research project by Alain Padeau that culminates in a sculptural musical instrument. It is crafted through the combination of bows, metal strings, and spherical acoustic chambers. The geometric architecture of the truncated icosahedron allows the artist to explore the scale of the acoustic chamber, transforming a handcrafted object into a work of art whose configuration and activation evoke other kindred instruments.
The system of sound propagation – created by a taut wire stretched across the ends of a bow and connected to a spherical acoustic chamber – belongs to the genealogy of plucked string instruments. Among its key predecessors is the mvett, found among the Fang, Béti, and Bulu peoples – Bantu-language cultural groups distributed across Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon. Dozens of related instruments, such as the ngoni, gurmi, goje, guembri, masengo, bolon, and kora, echo the mvett’s construction model. These instruments sometimes take on more Islamic forms – resembling the lute – while always preserving the function originally performed by the gourd in the acoustic chamber. From this system derives the berimbau, a fundamental instrument in the practice of capoeira – an embodied art that blends combat, play, and dance, combining rhythm and physical agility. Capoeira was developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans and their descendants. Also derived from this lineage is the bobre, used on Réunion Island to accompany singing, dance, and the music of maloya – a genre born from the interaction between African and French musical traditions, with strong rhythmic and linguistic roots from East Africa. Thus, the bobre is part of a complex diasporic apparatus which, like capoeira, was designed to offer protection and ease the suffering of bodies exploited by enslaved labor.
Of Réunionese origin, Alain Padeau revisits the therapeutic effects of the bobre, drawing not only on its ancestral morphology, tracing back to the African mvett, but also on an immersive exploration of the melodic and hypnotic resonance of the single-string instrument. In the Moka BOB Sound System, the artist merges principles of plucked and struck strings: the hand that would traditionally hold the instrument is now free, while the body of the instrument is supported autonomously – either on a stand or directly upon its acoustic chamber.
The arpeggiated playing of metal strings, inherited from guitar practice, heightens the tactile and sonic engagement with string vibration. Whether muted or allowed to resonate freely, the plucked strings of this new instrument open a path from monody to polyphony – since single-string instruments are, by nature, monodic. Moka BOB Sound System thus explores new dimensions of sound perception by embracing improvisation and unpredictability in the transformation of sound into musical arrangement.
