Ever since Compas Central began in January 1996, " Jacompas" has been writing these short editorials. They comment on the music world and often ask us to get involved. To read them all, start with the newest one below and follow the links at the bottom right each page.

Compere General Compas, where is compas Going ?

October 15th 2006

If the Caribbean had a heart, Haiti would be one of the countries in the basin contending for it's heartbeat.  The warmth of its people, the sun, the landscape, the history, the leadership displayed by our forefathers and the incredible music all combine to make Haiti a legendary place. Although we pretend to relentlessly continue our efforts to promote Haiti and its culture throughout the world, Haitian music has yet to benefit from mass appeal similar to other Caribbean styles like reggae or even calypso. why ? The consensus is that haitian musicians are the very best Caribbean performers but the lack of discipline, organization, togetherness and an international vehicle to disseminate its fruits seem to clog the progress and continue to fail at delivering the dream of Nemours Jean-Baptiste : a world known music.

If we recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of compas, we must start by analyzing our past failures and really ask the hard questions but more importantly agree to make the giant effort needed to take compas to the next level. A very important point raised by "Ritchie" in one of the songs on the recent 50th anniversary of Compas album suggest that there is no sense of common interest between the various musicians and groups and the reality that Haitians do not know how to constructively compete, that it is a Nasty Biznis, where competition try to kill the opposition instead of doing better, that backstabbing is widespread and fair play does not exist.

The time has come to call a truce, there must be some form of " cessez le feu " reached between musicians and a feeling that they have a common interest; until that day, this industry will remain a marginal entity and in the process, the musicians will continue to suffer and in the process haitian music will certainly lose it's cultural identity.

The music must also be better conceived, the texts better written. Compas needs to become a music that looks toward the future but build it on the past... we cannot continue to ignore our identity and look to foreign influences like zouk or reggae to mortgage our success. The structure and strong traditional beats like congo yanvalou nago ibo cannot and should no longer be set aside they must be the backbone to ensure that we maintain our identity and originality.

In the late 80’s Zouk Love and Digital Compas bands and the less popular genres Ragga, racines and tropical jazz simultaneously infused a new blood to haitian music; not long after Twoubadou thanks to fabrice Rouzier and clement belizaire began to become a large influence. Was that return to our traditional music signaling and admission that our past must be drawn upon to build the present ? Shortly after we saw an explosion in the genres giving rise to the interest in our music overseas : boukman experience , king posse, strings and Mozayik began to open the doors of international appeal.

Should compas look into the success of Strings and Mozayik and the lessons brought forward by the many great haitian jazz musicians? their international appeal is undeniable and while many Haitians have sort of ignored this genre of music, there is a substantial following by non-Haitians abroad that are very fond of Jazz music and have shown serious support to the Haitians musicians who dedicated their lives and craft to playing Jazz music. Despite the fact that it’s not the dominant and popular art form in Haiti, they continue to travel the world : Japan, St-lucia, Montreux, New Orleans and many other venues are singing the praise of haitian music.

How do we build a better haitian music Scene ???? It is time to call for a coumbite to rescue compas and haitian culture in general as it is it's most popular style

We would like to invite every fan every artist who has an interest in haitian music to participate in a campaign to create a better situation for musicians and music fans. yes many people have tried and failed at this idea, and haitian are presumed selfish and supposedly don't get involved but still have a love for great haitian music and agree that we have some of the best bands around. So building a cohesive scene and foster cooperation between artists, clubs, labels, radio stations, and the fans, funnel the overly competitive attitude between bands, clubs, and labels to allow these crossover fans who are isolated from other groups of musical styles to broaden their exposure to new music and bands. Haitian music would benefit tremendously by gaining a larger fan base to draw from, generating more revenues and soon able to tackle other issues like language and piracy.

See you Next time !

Jacompas