f34 “I
t was chaos,” recalls Steeve Valcourt,” leader, singer, and guitarist of Lakou Mizik. “After the earthquake every- one was so down, depressed and thinking it was the end of the world. Jonas and I, we were just musicians. We didn't know how to help, but we took our tambours and acoustic guitar and went among the tents and to people whose houses were badly damaged and we played for them. They loved it, and kept asking us to come back. And we did – every day.”
The son of Haitian jazz and bluesman Bolou Valcourt, one of
Haiti’s most respected musicians, Steeve was raised in Haiti and in the US. He too became a musician and later a sound engineer, with his own small studio downstairs at his father’s house, where he recorded many local bands and artists. Steeve and Jonas knew each other from an early age and were fast friends. Later Steeve came to produce Jonas’s original music, though the two were never in a band together.
Now they found themselves playing and singing to help neigh- bours and communities survive in the face of calamity, drawing on the strength and richness of Haiti’s music culture to keep spirits alive. “We wanted to find songs everyone could enjoy because if we played something too new the old generation would not understand it, and if we played something too old the new generation would not understand it,” says Steeve.
The desperate plight of Haitians brought US world music activist and producer Zach Niles down from Boston. He’d been to Haiti in 2006 for a film festival in Jacmel, where his documentary on Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars band – which he managed – was screened. Zach became strongly attracted to Haitian roots music. When four years later the director of the festival and the associated film school called him in desperation for help, he responded at once.
“It was about eight days after the quake,” Zach says. “The build-
ing was des troyed and the school was operating out of tents. I spent two months in Jacmel running the film school which turned into another inspiration for me to look at what kind of project I could create that would let me come down again to Haiti and work. At that point I wanted something similar to what we did with the SLRAS, which is to have the music and the story create a connection to a place that mostly only gets pretty horrible press coverage giving a very one-sided sense of it.”
“My intention was really to create a multi-media piece with musicians and their stories, a one-off thing. I didn’t intend to man- age a group – I’d just come out of doing that with the SLRAS – and wanted to meet musicians and to look at old music and redo it, introducing it to younger Haitians and taking it to people around the world. I came down again to begin that in November 2010,when cholera had just broken out, and Haiti was in the middle of a tumul- tuous election cycle.”
On the street Zach met a friend who was headed to Bolou Val-
court’s place and, recognising the name, he followed. “Boulo is a bit of a legend in Haiti. So I went to the studio and Jonas was there with Steeve, working with another band. I recorded that whole session and afterwards explained my idea of the project. They were so excited and willing, and said they were already doing that kind of thing, and using songs and music as a way locally to bring people’s spirits up.”
Steeve and Jonas were connected through their work to a web of artists throughout the country. “I knew all the other musicians of Lakou Mizik ,” says Steeve. “We used to meet, because they were all part of other bands before. It’s like a dream-team of Haiti that made Laikou Mizik. And for us Zach is a father, he’s much more than our manager.”
Someone asked the musicians to do a concert together and soon the project had become a band. As for the name, ‘lakou’ in Kreyòl means backyard – a place where people gather to sing and dance, to debate or share a meal. It also means home, or where you’re from. Lakou Mizik’s members come from all over Haiti. In addition to Steeve and Jonas, the line-up comprises young singer Nadine Remy, Lamarre Junior on bass and bass drum, Woulele Marcelin on hand-drum and percussion, Belony Beniste on accordeon, and Peterson Joseph ‘Ti Piti’ and James Carrier ‘Ti Malis’ on hocketting single-note ra-ra cornets and percussion. Sanba Zao, one of the legendary figures of Haitian mizik rasin (roots music) and the senior member of the band, sings and plays hand-drum and percussion in the vodou tradition.
“Haiti is a country that has taken in everything that comes from
Africa – from the Congo, from Benin, from Nigeria, from Senegal,” says Sanba Zao, speaking in heavily accented French. “We have many cultures. The sound of the drum is the sound of Haiti – we are from a country that’s very cultural on this level. You hear vodou drums all over.”
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