The new danceable pop from the African continent now dominates the global musical landscape, and Michaël Brun intends to ensure that Haitian music does not miss this speeding train. The composer, producer, remixer and DJ will hold a new edition of his Bayo evenings, celebration — way sound system — modern Caribbean and Afro-descendant musical cultures in which a dozen special guests will participate. “There will be artists from Montreal and elsewhere, but I don’t want to tell you which ones,” he says, teasingly, at the end of the video camera. Come on, Michael, not even a name?
You should have seen him smiling toothily, the Michaël Brun, as he marinated us expectantly. Hideaway, go! We try anyway: is it possible that your good friend J Balvin is there, he who appeared on stage (with Wyclef Jean and Boukman Eksperyans) during the New York Bayo party in May 2022? No, he replies. Who else then? His colleague Gardy Girault perhaps, a regular in Montreal clubs, a composer and DJ who likes to dip his house records in the Haitian rara broth? Kaytranada? Oh no, he’s on tour in Europe.
The guest list for this evening will remain a surprise for a few hours, but we can still predict this: the Montreal public will have exclusive access to the unreleased songs from the mini-album that Michaël Brun will launch in two weeks. This will be his first release since he signed an agreement with the American record company Astralwerks, after ten years of developing his project on his own.
This signature has symbolic value for the musician born in Port-au-Prince to a Haitian father and a Guyanese mother, he who was destined rather for a career in medicine: “When I started making music , it already had, without me realizing it, this “global” international flavor, since I was influenced as much by the music of Haiti as by electronic music or R&B. Everything I’ve done since, my songs, travels, collaborations with other artists, all of that has led me to my goal: to make music that bridges cultures. »
It’s raining heavily in Brooklyn, where we join Michaël; the drops are beading on the window of his small office. On the next wall, the musician first shows us the certificate attesting to his victory at the Latin Grammy Awards three years ago for his work as a composer and producer on the album colors by J Balvin. Then he shows us the framed vinyl edition of New generationalbum released in 1988 by the Haitian trio Skandal, co-founded by his father, Patrick Brun, composer, singer and guitarist.
“His band was doing fusion music,” says Brun. It was kompa [et du zouk]but with the new wave and synthwave influence of the era”, those synthesizer sounds that had percolated into 1980s pop and rock. ” [La démarche de papa] greatly influenced the music I make today. Modern Afropop draws its influences as much from highlife and Afrobeat of the 1970s as from Jamaican dancehall, incorporating those of Europe and America. It also seems to me that in all this mixture of influences, we forgot the kompa, and that’s what I want to find. »
When I started making music, it already had, without me realizing it, this “global” international flavor, since I was influenced as much by the music of Haiti as by electronic music or R&B.
In his professional debut, a dozen years ago, Michaël Brun remixed Calvin Harris, Charli XCX, Childish Gambino, while refining his own compositions. The meeting with J Balvin was decisive; after his work on the album colorshe co-wrote and co-produced last year the song Forever My Loveduet between the Colombian megastar and Ed Sheeran: “To be in the studio with them, to discuss their visions of what this collaboration was going to be, it was quite an experience” which, no doubt, aroused the interest of several record companies towards the young musician.
A showcase of Haitian culture
Three excerpts from his next mini-album have already been released: the excellent cluelesswith Nigerian singer Oxlade, the tropical house tune Charge It (with Jamaicans Masego and Bayka and American Jozzy), and the smoothest, rapped, Sak Pase, this one with the singer Lolo Zouaï and the Franco-Algerian Saint Levant. But the song the fans have been waiting for is jessica, collaboration with Haitian singer J. Perry — a real kompa-pop-electronic bomb, bringing the Creole musical argument back into the conversation about the modern Afrobeat sound. “In my creation, I want to incorporate different aspects of Haitian culture, but in an experimental way: I don’t just want to reinterpret tradition. I want to push back what can be done with these sounds, the kompa, the rabòday, even the troubadou. »
The first edition of Bayo, says Michaël, was held in the underprivileged district of Jalousie, in Port-au-Prince: “Bayo, in Creole, means ‘to give’. Attending concerts is often out of reach for the majority of people who cannot afford it in my country. It made me want to organize small free concerts with musician friends, all over the country, and especially in these localities where there are few events of the kind. We bring a sound system, I do the DJ, singers and musicians friends join the party; I developed this idea to make it a showcase of Haitian culture all over the world, since everything we see on the news about Haiti is negative. Not everyone knows all that Haitian culture has to offer. »
Michaël Brun will present bayo Friday at 10 p.m., at the MTelus, featured at the Festival international de jazz de Montréal