The music of Haiti is influenced most greatly by European colonial ties and African migration (through slavery). In the case of European colonization, musical influence has derived primarily from the French, however Haitian music has been influenced to a significant extent by its Spanish-speaking neighbors, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, whose Spanish-infused music has contributed much to the country's musical genres as well. Styles of music unique to the nation of Haiti include music derived from vodou ceremonical traditions and the wildly popular Compas. Haiti didn't have any recorded music until 1937 when Jazz Guignard was recorded non-commercially.
COMPAS
Compas (in French) or Kompa (in Creole) is a complex, ever-changing music that arose from European ballroom dancing, mixed with Haiti's bourgeois culture. It is a refined music, played with an underpinning of tipico, and méringue (related to Dominican merengue) as a basic rhythm. Much of early Haitian music consisted of Western dances with africanized versions of the accompanying music. Some of these forms still exist, including menwat, a variation of the minuet. In the early 20th century, Compas was further influenced by multiple genres, including the Cuban son, calypso, salsa, soca and soukous. Beginning in 1915, the American military occupation of Haiti brought swing and big band music, and Haitian musicians incorporated the swinging style into Compas. Among the artists to rise to prominence was the group Les Jazz de Jeunes.
Compas direct was invented in the mid-1950s by a group of artists, already then famous, called Coronto International; it soon became popular throughout the Antilles, especially in Martinique and Guadeloupe, where it evolved into zouk. Webert Sicot and Nemours Jean Baptiste became the two major powers in the group. Sicot left and formed a new group and an intense rivalry developed between the two, though they remained good friends. Nemours played a popular, improvised, mambo-influenced style called konpa direk (Creole, while Sicot's sophisticated, significantly Cuban-influenced cadence rampa was inaccessible to mainstream listeners.
It was used as a tool of the Duvalier dictatorship (both to trumpet praise as well as to divert attention from socio-political oppression) as well as later being a tool to question authoritarianism. Most Compas in the late 20th and early 21st century deals with themes of heterosexual love relations and at times includes lewd and suggestive, potentially male chauvinist attitudes.
MINI-JAZZ
As cadence rampa became more and more experimental, and Compas direct incorporated more effective pop structures, American- and French-style pop spawned mini-jazz bands that became perhaps the first fully Haitian form of pure pop. Ibo Combo, Les Ambasadeurs, Les Fantaisistes de Carrefour, Shleu Shleu, Les Frères Déjean, Le Bossa Combo, Los Incognitos de Pétionville and others remain influential and popular artists. In the early 1970s, Los Incognitos de Pétionville became Tabou Combo, whose 1969 Haiti incorporated major influences from American funk and began a swift rise to international stardom for the band and the Haitian music scene. By 1984, Tabou Combo had become chart-toppers in Paris and elsewhere across the globe.
ZOUK
The mid-1980s saw the blockbuster success of zouk (itself a Compas-derived genre), which soon traded influences with all the greatest of Caribbean genres, including merengue, calypso, salsa, and compas. The zouk wave was followed by an influx of Haitian artists like System Band, Zin, Top Vice and Karess who incorporated rock and roll, hip hop and jazz into compas, and experimented with new lyrical content, such as feminism
HAITIAN RAP
The local homegrown Haitian hip hop movement is rising in popularity in Haiti and other communities where there is a strong Haitian presence. It is becoming more and more popular with Haitian youth, often communicating social and political topics as well as materialistic concepts. Compas as well as other popular local music beats are used frequently with urban sounds. Popular Haitian hip hop artists are Black Alex from King Posse, Original Rap Staff, Top Adlerman. The recent years have seen a rise in popularity for Haitian Hip-Hop with artists such as RockFam Lame-a, Barikad Crew, Seca Konsa, Bennchoumy, Mystik 703, Magik Click, Mecca AKA Grimo. Other Haitian hip hop artists have yet to evolved. Among them Solo, known for his story telling ability and a style which resembles the late American hip hop icon Tupac Shakur and plenty others.
Haitians in general are on the Hip Hop on the global level as well. Torch (rapper), aka ("“DJ Haitian Star"".), has been rapping since the mid-1980s has been one of the most influential contributors to German hip hop. He is "a hip hop activist, appointed by rap- godfather Afrika Bambaataa to head the first German chapter of Zulu Nation... Advanced Chemistry [his band] burst onto the hip hop scene with a maxi-single released in November 1992. The song, “Fremd in eigenem Land” (foreigner in your own country), made a pointed statement about the position of immigrants in German society."
