1001 Albums
en
Create account

49 albums · 1962–2024

Music of Haiti, from Nemours and konpa to Boukman Eksperyans, rara and today

· 2 min read · by 1001 Albums

A rara band in the street at night, its players blowing bamboo and plastic vaksin trumpets over a drum
Tabou Combo in white on stage, singers at the front and the congas behind, at the Nuits d'Afrique festivalThe drummer Frisner Augustin laughing as he plays a tanbou, one arm raised, in a black and white photograph
A rara band in the street, Haiti, carnival 2022. Photo: Ccini06, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Tabou Combo at the Festival International Nuits d'Afrique in Montréal, 2014. Photo: Didier Moïse, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · The master drummer Frisner Augustin playing for a vodou dance in Brooklyn, early 1980s. Photo: Chantal Regnault, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Haiti's popular music has a dance of its own, konpa, which Nemours Jean-Baptiste set going in the fifties and Webert Sicot answered with his kadans rampa, then the mini-jazz of Les Shleu-Shleu, Tabou Combo, Les Frères Déjean, Skah Shah, Magnum Band and Coupé Cloué, Ti Manno, Toto Bissainthe and Manno Charlemagne for the song, Boukman Eksperyans' Vodou Adjae, Boukan Ginen and RAM for the racine movement that took the drums of the lakou onto the stage, Emeline Michel, Beethova Obas and BélO, Sweet Micky, Carimi, T-Vice, Zenglen, Klass, Harmonik and Kaï for the konpa of New York, Miami and Port-au-Prince since, the rara of Chouk Bwa Libète and Lakou Mizik, the twoubadou of Ti-Coca, Moonlight Benjamin's rock, Mélissa Laveaux, Canadian-born of Haitian parents, and the Haitian-born Wyclef Jean. The list has 49 records from 1962 to 2024, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; the twoubadou guitar song beyond a nod, the church and carnival recordings, Martha Jean-Claude and Ansy Dérose, whose records are not on Deezer as albums, and the old 78s and Ibo LPs that never reached streaming would each need a list of their own. About 44 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Jazz 6%Latin 5%Folk & Country 4%Other 85%
  • Jazz 6%
  • Latin 5%
  • Folk & Country 4%
  • Other 85%

The genres named most: haitian, konpa, roots, chanson, folk, racine.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Haiti 49. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.