jazz

Ninth edition of Port-au-Prince International Jazz Festival begins
The staging of the Port-au-Prince International Jazz Festival for 2015, the ninth edition of the vastly enjoyable musical event, was from January 17 to 24. Daring tourists to discover Haiti through the festival, the promoters billed it as a coming together of a multitude of quality international bands from the Haitian Diaspora, North America, Europe and South America. The headliners of the event included The Yellow Jackets, Ranee Lee, Laurent de Wilde, Etienne Charles, Maya Azucena, Tabou Combo, and Jowee Omicil.

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Gashford Guillaume, one of the founding members of the band Mozayik, has his parents to thank for the influence that has made his band's sound a resounding promise of things to come. Having come from a family with strong musical ties, he picked up the skill from his father and older brothers.

Born to Haitian parents, and still having relatives living in the Caribbean, Guillaume has taken his band there before to perform in the International Jazz Festival held in Port-au-Prince.

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Haitian-American Cécile Salvant is a jazz singer, whose emergence onto the music scene has created a stir.

She entered the Thelonious Monk jazz-singing competition and won. Later, Salvant released WomanChild. Her CD contains a pastiche of blues standards and Parisian torch songs.

Salvant has an ability to imbue her phraseology with prisms of color. Musicians love her, crafting arrangements that accentuate her voice. And they look forward to watching her mature into one of the great jazz vocalists.

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Around the time of Ti Paris, in the 1940's and 1950's, a number of Haitian bands could be found playing all styles of jazz and big band music while others were performing and rearranging popular Latin Rumba, Tipico, Jazz, Bolero, Meringue and salsa , French, American, and European tunes.

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