Lakou Mizik, Leyla McCalla share Haitian roots new music

Lakou Mizik are a multi-generational Haitian collective that combine common Haitian models like vodou, Rara, and compro with earth new music adventurousness. The band fashioned in the wake of the devastating earthquake of 2010 that killed much more than 200,000 people.

Co-founder Steeve Valcourt and his bandmate Jonas Attis on a regular basis visited camps of Haitians remaining homeless by the disaster to try to lift their spirits with new music.

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“We didn’t know how to remember to these persons mainly because when you see them they are all small pleasure, they experience like it’s the stop of the planet, like it was the conclusion of periods for some people,” recalled Valcourt. “Then we begun to convey a guitar and a conga and begun to complete in those people camps. The difficulty was there had been individuals that really like compa audio, there are folks that appreciate reggae, church tunes, traditional, so we didn’t know what sort of tunes to engage in. There’s the youthful technology and the aged technology, it is a mix of every thing when you go to the camps. We began to provide a new fashion. We combined every little thing alongside one another, so the vodou type, dancehall, reggae, and it looks like everybody likes it.”

One day, supervisor Zach Niles walked into Valcourt’s studio hunting for his well-known father, Haitian music legend Boulo Valcourt, and achieved Valcourt and Attis as they ended up recording another band. Niles wished to share previous Haitian songs with the relaxation of the environment and recruited Valcourt to assistance set a band together to record a song. Niles questioned Valcourt who his aspiration staff of musicians would be and Valcourt set to inviting all of his beloved Haitian artists to collaborate on a song, which include grasp drummer and legend of racine (roots) music Sanba Zao.