In the capital’s streets, women and men who were in on the joke began to salute each other with a gleeful “ti pati’m!” My little part! The title, a play on words, can be twisted a few different ways, referring either to a political party, a piece of the pie, or a slang term for penis - “let my little part(y) stand.” The song, a ripple of sly jabs at Haitian political dysfunction over rapid-fire drums and keyboard licks, quickly slipped into everyday slang. “Kite Ti Pati’m Kanpe,” a song released by Freshla and his group Vwadèzil for the 2015 national carnival celebrations, went into heavy rotation around the country following its release in January. And, as it happens, Freshla has a song that’s tailor-made for the occasion. After four years of delays and aggravating political theater, over 100 political parties have registered for overdue elections staggered over this summer and fall that will fill every office in the country, a staggering 6,000 local, regional, and national government posts in total to be filled. This is standard fare in Haiti, where the country’s better-known musicians are regularly courted by brands and bureaucrats hoping to harness their star power. PORT-AU-PRINCE - It’s campaign season in Port-au-Prince, and the singer Freshla’s phone has been lighting up for months with calls from senatorial candidates and presidential hopefuls looking for an endorsement. Twoubadou is Haiti as most who have never been here have ever heard it before, providing yet another good reason to get back here soon. This, to me, is too bad as twoubadou represents so much of what’s great about Haiti as an incubator for the arts, always bringing disparate cultures together to form wonderful new and uniquely West Indian expressions. I’ve heard it plenty at folkloric shows and special performances at notable restaurants, attractions, and hotels in and around Port-au-Prince, but hardly ever on the radio in Haiti or anywhere else. Like other forms of Caribbean folk music – mento in Jamaica, quelbe in the Virgin Islands – twoubadou doesn’t top the charts as it once did. The sound is distinctly Haitian, though its Cuban roots shine through as well, with lyrics sometimes shifting from Spanish to French to Kreyol and back again.Īs legendary as twoubadou is in Haiti, it’s not much known outside of the country. The Cuban sound was soon melded with Haitian méringue and twoubadou was born.Įvery time I’ve seen a twoubadou band playing anywhere in Haiti, be it along the Champs de Mars at Carnival time or in the lobby of the tony Marriott Port-au-Prince, the set up is the same: acoustic guitars, a pair of maracas, percussion, cowbell, a scraper, a drum – nothing so cumbersome that it couldn’t make the journey to and from the cane fields in Cuba. Twoubadou traces its origins to the early 1900s, when seasonal migrant laborers working the cane fields in Cuba came to know and love Cuban guajiro music. In Haiti as in ancient Europe, the twoubadou is equal parts poet, singer, composer, and musician entertaining the masses with suggestive, often humorous songs of love, lust, and the trials of life. Just as the name suggests, Haitian twoubadou echoes the centuries-old medieval musical stylings of European troubadours. It is those migrant workers who we have to thank for twoubadou.

As with Haiti’s culinary traditions, the music here bears influences from a kaleidoscope of foreign cultures some brought to Haiti by immigrants, others picked up by Haitian laborers while working seasonal jobs overseas.

Art is life in Haiti, but music is its soul.

Www haitian musique com