Wesli - Tradisyon - an exploration of Haiti’s music and history (Cumbancha)
Tradisyon is the first of a two-part project that retells the story of Haiti’s past and imagines its future.
“You have to know where you’re from to know where you’re going,” says Wesli, the acclaimed Montreal-based winner of the prestigious 2019 JUNO Award. Overflowing with 19 songs, Tradisyon explores traditional chants from the voodoo religion, explosive carnival rara rhythms and lilting, folksy twoubadou songs. To prepare for his ambitious new musical project, Tradisyon, the uniquely talented Haitian-Canadian songwriter, guitarist and producer Wesli (Wesley Louissaint) had to return to his roots. He embarked on a multi-year musical pilgrimage to explore often hidden facets of Haitian traditions. Wesli traveled across his homeland, visiting lakous, gathering places and community groups for practitioners of Haiti’s voodoo religion, to learn songs in African languages brought to Haiti hundreds of years ago. He honed his skills at a wide range of local musical instruments, from powerful interlocking rara horns to intricate drums in all shapes and sizes, not to mention folk instruments such as the Haitian banjo. And he reconnected with the profound spirituality and rich life philosophy of Afro-Haitian beliefs, which represent the inspiration and motivation, indeed the very soul, of Haitian culture. The result of this ambitious research is Tradisyon, the sixth album of Wesli’s celebrated career, and the first of a two-part set that retells the story of Haiti’s past and imagines its future. The encyclopedic first album features 19 songs, original compositions and treasures from the expansive Haitian music repertoire. By drawing on these traditions, Africa inevitably emerges -- through the rara, petro, nago, congo and yanvalou rhythms, and the lyrics sung both in Creole and the African languages of Yoruba, Ewe and Fon. They are all accompanied by local instruments such as the bamboo, the kata, the segon, the boula, the manman and the banjo, an originally African instrument that had been adopted by European colonizers.
