[3] Compared to séga, which employs numerous string and wind European instruments, traditional maloya uses only percussion and the musical bow.

[4] Traditional instruments include: Maloya songs are often politically oriented[6] and their lyrical themes are often slavery and poverty.

[6] The indigenous music and dance form of maloya was often presented as a style of purely African origin, linked ancestral rituals from Africa ("service Kaf" and Madagascar (the "servis kabaré"), and as such a musical inheritance of the early slave population of the island.

[8] Maloya was adopted as a medium for political and social protest by Creole poets such as Waro, and later by groups such as Ziskakan.

[10] This musical form was the subject of a 1994 documentary film by Jean Paul Roig, entitled Maloya Dousman.