The Haitian folk song "Choucoune" (also known as "Yellow Bird") is based on a poem written by a Haitian writer Oswald Durand at the end of the 19th century. It was composed in honor of a beautiful Haitian marabou woman (marabou refers to a dark-skinned Haitian with less 'negroid' features). Apparently this woman was named Marie Noel Belizaire and she ran a restaurant in Cap Haitien in the last few decades of the nineteenth century.
http://webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti-archive/msg01015.html Check this for a more detailed history
The poem was set to music by Haitian composer Michel Mauleart Monton in the 1890s and it became very popular. It was arranged as a slow mereng and eventually found an international audience by the 1940s or 1950s. Harry Belafonte, the Jamaican-American singer who helped popularize calypso and other forms of Caribbean music, recorded the song as well. Many assumed it was of Jamaican origin since they believed it to be a calypso number, but that is only because the title of the song was changed when first translated into English.
Here's Belafonte's version of the song, which only retained the melody. "Don't Ever Love Me."
Here is an Arab-Haitian's jazz/meringue rendition of the Haitian classic. Issa El Saieh was also famous for supporting Haitian art
Haitian woman singing the song
American vocal group singing "Yellow Bird"
http://www.folkways.si.edu/listen2.aspx?type=preview&trackid=21590 Version of the song by Lolita Cuevas and Frantz Casseus
Arthur Lyman's Hawaiian-inflected version of the tune
Celia Cruz and Haitian-Cuban singer's version
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