LOVE AND HAITI

Local fundraiser celebrates the art and music of the world’s first free Black republic

BY JEZY J. GRAY

If mass media is your only window into the Republic of Haiti, mention of the island nation likely conjures a small constellation of sufferings. From natural disasters like the catastrophic earthquake of 2010 to the ongoing social and political turmoil set loose by the assassination of president Jovenel Moïse, the country has become twinned with adversity in the minds of many Americans at the mercy of our agony-prone 24/7 news ecosystem.

But when Paul Beaubrun reflects on his childhood in the capital city of Portau-Prince, a centerpiece of so many harrowing headlines that have shaped popular conception of his ancestral home over these past decades, the current New York City resident doesn’t think about hardship. He hears music.

“Imagine waking up and your mom and dad are in the kitchen. Mom is cooking. Dad is in his underwear with a recorder in his hand, and mom is singing. That’s the way they created songs and shared ideas,” says the multi-instrumentalist whose parents founded Grammy Awardnominated Haitian supergroup Boukman Eksperyans in 1978, an influential roots music outfit Beaubrun now oversees as musical director on top of his solo career and work as a touring member of marquee indie-rock act The Arcade Fire. “That’s one of my earliest memories. There were always instruments around … music [was] almost like drinking water.”

That’s the Haiti you’ll see, and hear, during an upcoming benefit concert and gallery show at The Arts HUB in Lafayette on June 25. Featuring music by Beaubrun and visual works from Front Range artists Viktor El-Saieh and Ketty Devieux, the event is designed in part to offer a new register for the plight and pleasures of the often misunderstood island nation. Proceeds from the evening will benefit Locally Haiti, a Louisville-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by a trio of Episcopal priests in 1989 that centers Haitian leadership in developing locally led and communitybased programs in a place where camaraderie is often built through cultural expression.

“There’s a ton of music in Haiti. It’s a big part of the culture. It’s a big part of history. And it’s not always big concerts — it can just be people getting together to play acoustic instruments,” says Locally Haiti Executive Director Wynn Walent, a musician in his own right who met Beaubrun when the two performed together in New York nearly a decade ago. “It’s not altogether different from how we find real joy here, which is people being with people, being exposed to art and music and culture.”

You’ll see that joy in the vibrant and urgent brush strokes of El-Saieh, the Haitianborn Denverite who designed a four-panel series as a backdrop to Beaubrun’s performance at the upcoming fundraiser in Lafayette. The work depicts a celebratory scene of bodies in movement, with figures dancing joyously among open flames. “I want Paul to feel like he has Haiti behind him,” the artist and fellow Portau-Prince native says of his first work of set design, offering a figurative counterpoint to the haunting abstract compositions of Devieux.

“Some of the best Haitian artists, the ones I’m inspired by the most, are just completely uninhibited by convention. A lot of these artists made masterpieces without any formal training,” says El-Saieh, counting the island’s old masters like Philomé Obin, André Pierre and Seymour Etienne Bottex among his influences. “I think that kind of fearlessness and lack of inhibition ties into the broader mythology of Haitian culture, the revolution and everything … a very broad scope of what is possible in the imagination.”

‘IF A FIRE MAKE IT BURN’

The fire in the word “revolution” may have smothered through casual use in contemporary U.S. parlance, but it still burns hot in Haiti. The country of more than 11 million was the site of the world’s first successful slave rebellion near the dawn of the 19th century, when the people threw off the yoke of their colonial rulers through a bloody 13-year gauntlet on what had up until that moment been known as the French-claimed island of SaintDomingue. The first Black-led nation emerged from the bloodshed, changing history forever.

“The entire world order was turned on its head,” El-Saieh says. “Something so incredible happened in a situation where it was not supposed to happen. That’s such an inspiring idea. When you get into the mythology of it, the stories we tell and pass down over generations shape how we think about the world. … Revolution is not a one-time event where you snap your fingers and everything changes. It’s an ongoing thing. We’re still in the process of the Haitian Revolution.”

But as the grim parade of broadcast chyrons suggests, it’s not all dancing and liberation at the home of what is arguably the Western Hemisphere’s greatest victory of human freedom. On top of Haiti’s aforementioned natural and human-caused disasters, the country has a long history of violence, exploitation and abuse at the hands of