How Nero's Joe Ray Teamed With Lakou Mizik to Bring New Life to Haitian Vodou Traditions

There's a phrase in Haitian Creole -- “Yanyan wa manje vyann nan kite zo a” -- that translates to “eat the meat, leave the bones.” “You do your time, and you leave the rest of the time for the other generation that comes,” explains Steeve Valcourt, a guitarist and singer in the Haitian roots music eight-piece band Lakou Mizik. “You leave what you did, what you create, what you understand. And that's where your immortality starts to come through.

Sweating in the humid, tropical air, his mind whirring with excitement, Ray approached Valcourt about a collaboration. “It's a nice idea, because they're both styles of music that I love,” Valcourt says. “Back in Haiti, everything you do is with music: you're cleaning, doing dishes, working, you have a music that you're bumbling.

For Ray, the journey into the heart of Vodou roots music was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He gathered with Lakou Mizik in the institute studio, and for six months, they taught him the stories of the spirits, rhythms, their ancestors, themselves. Years of careful attention to detail, and assurances from Valcourt and his band that adding a four-four house beat to these traditional tunes was not in fact dishonoring them, led to a glorious, moody, celebratory project that blends the old with the new without losing any of Haitian roots music's intoxicating magic. It moves through peaks and valleys, pulsing with the freedom of a night spent dancing in a dark European warehouse or on golden tropical sands.

Source: Entertainment Trends (entertainmenttrends.net)

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