» 53:02 podcast.mp3

A tous les enfants d’Haiti, pour la mémoire et pour l’histoire afin qu’ils sachent d’où ils viennent.

Lumane Casimir, l’Impératrice de la Méringue haitienne, elle était toute musique: chanteuse, guitariste et interprète. Voix suave et crystalline. Son gosier, un apprentis sonore d’ou s’échappaient, on eut dit, des myriades d’onomapées. On ne peut parler de diva ou de chef de file sans évoquer Lumane Casimir, le modèle inamovible, la pionnière, l’héroine et la cingale. Après avoir allumée, sillonée et fait danser toute la ville, la samba éternelle retournait aux confins du temps et de l’espace, loin du milieu impitoyable du show-business et de cette vie qui ne lui fit jamais cadeaux. Après avoir revigoré la nation et son folklore s’envolait chanter pour les anges, au regret éternel des amants de la musique.

Martha Jean-Claude, Sirêne chanterelle et diva aux deux iles. C’est sa voix qui berçait et revitalisait même en exil, durant les années ombrageuses de la dictature duvalierienne, comme une éclaircie pour faire espérer et apaiser de son flair angélique le coeur des opprimés. Une voix exceptionnelle de la musique haitienne et certainement pas une femme-artiste de tous les Jours.

Hervé Gilbert

Hommages aux musiciens
Vidéo réalisée par le CIDIHCA en collaboration avec M. Serge Jean-Louis (LOPEZ)

Centre International de Documentation et d'Information Haïtienne, Caribéenne et Afro-Canadienne - CIDIHCA.com

Coupé Cloué, a.k.a. Gesner Henry He was born in 1925 in Leogane, Haiti. He won renown first as a professional football star. Gesner's nickname, typical of his sly nature, was a multifold pun on both soccer skills and sexual prowess. His musical career lasted some forty years, beginning with Trio Crystal, later renamed Trio Select which then morphed into L'Ensemble Select by the early '70s. In that time, Coupé Cloué managed a brainy and sensuous meld of old-school twobadou style (its guitar technique imported from Cuba by cane-cutters), island folk rhythms, Haitian méringue and jazz. He popularized electric guitar in Haiti's pop music. Singing in Francophone patois, from the beginning Henry evinced a knack for double entendre. (Though the cover photo and the title of today's album, Sôciss, nearly qualifies as a single entendre, one about as subtle as a flying anvil.) And so, another reason to enjoy Coupé Cloué: Gesner Henry was wonderfully rude, as remains obvious to Haitians and honkies alike. Most of his songs featured extended monologues set to music, commentaries on life and love and sex, the human condition at a humid latitude; imagine Balzac telling dirty jokes while leading an irresistable dance band. Gesner's own delivery alternated between song and speech much like that of his American counterpart, Andre Williams, another transcendental hedonist.



The guitar interplay within L'Ensemble Select much resembles that heard in Congolese rumba-rock or soukous, the stuff of my initial (and future) NCIP posts. Gesner Henry always claimed that he had not heard soukous prior to visiting the Congo in 1975. Not surprisingly, Henry & Co. were très populaire in Africa and remained so at home. Indeed, Coupé Cloué may have been too popular for their own good in Haiti, as they were often asked to perform at parties held by the Tonton Macoutes, the dreaded secret police force maintained by dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. Gesner Henry was sensitive to criticism of these gigs, deflecting charges that he supported a corrupt regime by pointing out that an invitation from the Tonton Macoutes was one that you couldn't refuse.

Gesner Henry died at age seventy-three in 1998, about four weeks after his final performance. Like Pamelo Mounk'a, Henry was a victim of diabetes. It saddens me, that there won't be any more records by Coupé Cloué; I wish there were more like him. Other Haitian bands like Boukman Eksperyans and Tabou Combo and RAM more recently have made inroads with international audiences; while they're each one fine in their own right, they all seem more than a bit polite. None of them have the rootsy, lo-fi raunch of Gesner and his ensemble of horn-dogs. Someone once described Neil Young's Crazy Horse as being the antithesis of slick, looking like a band made up of car thieves. To judge by the picaresque verve evident in every note of their music, Coupé Cloué et L'Ensemble Select played like a band of car thieves.

from permanentcondition.blog: Coupé Cloué et L'Ensemble Select «Sôciss»
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