Irène

Merry Christmas! Today, I am enjoying jazz and a random assortment of music. Today's gem is an old meringue, "Irène," performed by the Montreal-based band, Makaya. Irène the name of my great-grandmother, also has sentimental value to me, but I generally love older styles of Caribbean and Latin music, especially styles with a hint of jazz. The original can be found on Youtube or Spotify, as part of the Sans Parole volume of Haitian Belle Epoque music, consisting of meringues, big band, and jazz sounds.

Grog Mwen

An adorable tribute to a Haitian classic, Makaya's rendition of "Grog Mwen" is a welcome addition. Also worth checking out are versions of the song from Haitiando, Africando, and last, but certainly not least, Super Jazz des Jeunes. Clearly, some Haitian music is indebted to the influence of Cuban styles.

Ludovic Lamothe's Lisette

I have not located a recording of Lamothe himself playing his arrangement of the earliest written Creole poem from Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti), but it's a beautiful melody he chose to adapt this old Creole poem to. It's very distinct from that of Louisiana Creole black slaves (yet both are clearly derived from the same textual source that must have spread to Louisiana through Saint Dominguan immigrants to Louisiana), but a more elegant, stately melody in the form of a Haitian meringue. Here is a jazzy version by Makaya that is quite moving, fusing the lyrics of the poem with Lamothe's arrangement in a jazz vein. Oh, and last but certainly not least, check out a folksy string band rendition of "Lisette." As stated in my previous post on the love poem for a black slave, Lisette, this song epitomizes the cultural (and musical) creolization that led to the flourishing of music in the circum-Caribbean region (which itself has tremendous import for the development of jazz, Haitian mereng, Cuban creolized forms of the contradanza and the son).