The guitar is still relatively new to the music of Haiti, the tiny Caribbean country that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic at the eastern edge of the Greater Antilles.
It features heavily in the sound of Lakou Mizik, a pioneering combo that is, according to the group’s website, “united in a mission to use the healing spirit of music to communicate a message of pride, strength and hope for their country.”
The band is actually a collective composed of Haitian musicians young and old, all joined in sound and vision.
Master drummer Sanba Zao anchors the unit on percussion and vocals. A leader of the country’s ‘back to the earth’ movement, Zao has been performing for over three decades and is revered for his encyclopedic knowledge of traditional folk songs.
He is joined in the band by singers Jonas Attis and Nadine Remy, bassist Junior Lamarre, accordionist Belony Beniste, and horn players Peterson “Ti Piti” Joseph and James Carrier and guitarist Steeve Valcourt.
Valcourt recently became a Breedlove player, acquiring a Pursuit Nylon Concert just before the octet’s U.S. tour—in advance of the October release of its second album, the stunning, eclectic and inspiring HaitiaNola.
In Haitian Kreyol the word lakou carries multiple connotations. It can mean the backyard, a gathering place where people come to sing and dance, to debate or share a meal. It can also mean “home” or “where you are from,” which in Haiti is a place filled by the ancestral spirits of all others that were born there.
The group was actually formed in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 Haitian earthquake by Vermont-based “director, strategist, entertainment producer and social justice advocate” Zach Niles, who previously—through his roots in documentary filmmaking—had created Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars.
Speaking with Breedlove just before heading out on the road as ticketing manager with the recent Rolling Stones tour, Niles, who has also worked in similar roles with Paul Simon, Madonna and Paul McCartney, said, “The story of the All Stars is very much about the idea of using music as a way to connect people to difficult places, through the personal stories of musicians.”
“So, after the earthquake in Haiti, I had the idea to try something similar because of all this terrible news coming out of the country—the quake and its aftermath, then cholera and the terrible elections. I had spent some time down there, so I thought maybe we could make something happen.”
Niles met Valcourt while he was seeking out the former’s famous father, Boulo, a legend in Haitian music. Valcourt and Attis gave Niles a crash course in Haitian tradition and instead of auditioning members, they simply identified the best players and enlisted them. Voila! Lakou Mizik.
Valcourt has already been making use of his nylon guitar in the studio, and said that it quickly became a fundamental element in the group’s unique, percussion- and vocal-heavy stage sound.
“I really feel I can grab the chords better than with other guitars, because the neck fits my hand so well. And the weight of it, for me, is perfect. I don't like to carry heavy guitars. I can spend all night with this one in my hand and or across my stomach and I don't even feel it.”
He likes that the instrument has a “tough” sound, “more guts to it,” meaning it cuts through the mix better than his earlier main axe, a miked Takamine acoustic, which he paired with a plugged-in Gibson ES-335.
“The pickup on the Breedlove is nice, I love the sound. It’s light; it feels good. I don't use my other guitar now—I only use this one because I love it.”
Boulo Valcourt was one of the key figures in popularizing the six-string in Haiti, at a time when the country’s banjo players were making their own instruments out of cooking oil cans. Valcourt père fashioned his first guitar with wood salvaged from a kitchen door.
“It was hard to have an acoustic guitar then!” Valcourt fils laughs.
But, as in so many societies, the guitar, despite its relative newness in Haiti, has played an important part politically.
“A big part of the culture in Haiti,” Valcourt says, “are people that sing songs of revolution, songs for our country. Most of them are acoustic, because for so long we had no electricity, and because they had to move around. Jean-Michel Daudier, for example, was a big legend of revolutionary songs. We have John Steve Brunache, too. All those guys were acoustic. They may have ended up in big bands afterwards, but in the beginning it was all acoustic.”
And Steeve’s Breedlove acoustic will help his voice be heard as he and Lakou Mizik continue to carry their message to the rest of the world.Steeve Valcourt & Lakou Mizik
“I'm going to use it for a long time,” he grins.
Experience the New Album: HAITIANOLA
HaitiaNola is a once-in-a-lifetime album that brings together Haitian roots revival collective Lakou Mizik and an incredible line-up of guest artists from the New Orleans music scene.
The project was inspired by the historical, cultural and spiritual connections between the people and music of New Orleans and Haiti. Mardi Gras and Kanaval traditions mix together like long-lost family members throughout the 14-track album, which was the result of a series of recording sessions in the Big Easy and Haiti.
Presided over by GRAMMY-winning New Orleans producer Eric Heigle (Lost Bayou Ramblers, Arcade Fire, The Soul Rebels), guest artists on HaitiaNola include Trombone Shorty, Tank from Tank & The Bangas, Win Butler & Régine Chassagne of Arcade Fire,
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Cyril Neville, Jon Cleary, Leyla McCalla, The Soul Rebels, Lost Bayou Ramblers, 79rs Gang, Raja Kassis (Antibalas), and Anders Osborne, among others.
The result of this collaborative gumbo is the album HaitiaNola, a sweaty celebration that manages to connect not only the rhythms and sounds of the two places but also the gritty energy, the unmistakable mysticism and the carefree Mardi Gras incantation of laissez les bon temps roulez (let the good times roll) that persists in both countries.
About Lakou Mizik
Lakou Mizik is a multigenerational collective of Haitian musicians formed in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake. The group includes elder legends and rising young talents, united in a mission to honor the healing spirit of their culture and communicate a message of pride, strength and hope to their countrymen and the world.
