There’s something special about Haitian zouk music, if you look in the right place. Mushi & Lakansyel’s Koté Ou, much like the cover suggests, is a meditation on the intimate and quite unique musical style of this Caribbean nation. A product of all the touchstone influences that have set foot in Haiti — latin, French, Brazilian, and African — Koté Ou was the attempt by one of the pioneers of the Haitian monster group Zèklè to show that they had this other side, as well. Much like Ayizan’s own, powerful work, this is music that’s both placeable and quite vaporous to even hope to pinpoint.
If you can put yourself in that place, this isn’t so much music to get in the beach with, but music to soundtrack a respite from it. Gorgeous, jazzy, and quite heartfelt, to my ears, it reminds me a lot of the dreamy MPB you’d hear in Brazil’s northeast, by the likes made from Clube Da Esquina members. You might also hears glimmers of the best work from Pat Metheny (circa his early, ECM period) and the more “floating” moments by groups like Weather Report and Return To Forever. However, if you understand the name of the group, you can understand the very personal music this was really for one person: Mushy Widmaier.
Mushy was born into one of Haiti’s pre-eminent musical families. His father, Ricardo Widmaier, was a popular Haitian vocalist while uncle (Herbert Widmaier) ran an influential jazz radio station. Together with his brothers Joël and Richard, Mushy would have the luxury of being able to receive a classical training and to perform with some of nation’s eminent early Jazz and classical pioneers. They were also able to afford and ship in some of the best recording equipment, unattainable to most Haitian performers. However, rather than make a killing living in Port-Au-Prince off the more profitable disco, merengue, or kompas styles they continuously, purposefully, worked outside the establishment.
Deeply in touch with the Afro-Caribbean music of their roots, and tilting far heavier into the African side of that equation, they began two groups: Zèklè and Lakansyel. Translating to “Light” and “Rainbow”, as Zèklè, joined by fellow supremely talented performer Raoul Denis Jr they were responsible for transforming the normally “light” kompas into this even more vibrant behemoth that would become known shortly to everyone as zouk. Albums like Stop would become popular on radio and soundtrack the lives of younger Haitians thirsty for a more Haitian form of funk music. Self-released, for the most part, the Widmaiers were able to exert complete control into a style that had reached a stagnation point. These steps into the “Pop” realm allowed them to have the finances to support their more audacious, experimental work as Lakansyel.
A product of deep personal loss and also of reflection, Mushi & Lakansyel’s Koté Ou (which translates to “Where Are You?) drew from their interest in pan-global music that blurred borders much like their own background had been an outgrowth of that sensibility to fuse so many ideas available to them.
“Koté Ou?” Project is emotionally tied to moments and places. Two friends Phillipe and Chantal Simpson lost their lives with “La Nationale No 2” while traveling to Rakai. Philippe was the first member who launched the label Zèklè Music with Ralph Boncy, Joël , Raoul Denis Jr and me. At that time, the music scene needed a change, Zèklè Music was a revolutionary platform to support that change. Zèklè was taking a different approach. That music was out of the mainstream. Most of Zèklè’s musicians gathered with common musical values. Our music was born from influences of music education and background such as classical, companion, folk, rock, soft rock, Pop, Brazilian music, French music etc. Jazz was familiar to our world. The influence from Herby Widmaier, Frantz Courtois, Gerald Merceron was also important for refining our skills. Three members of the group worked around Haitian radio stations. The style of many intercultural music played on the radio is a legacy given directly from our geographical conditions and it was cultural duality arising from our history.
For us, there is no borders in music, and rather than “whether we like it or not”, the evaluation criterion was not related to group nationality and race. When Zèklè’s first album was released, we were called “weather reports of the Caribbean” from the critics, which led to our song “Caribbean Report”. Meanwhile, in international jazz scenes, we were focusing on the emergence of a new style promoted by ECM labels. It is well known in the field of jazz, but they had a motto. Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, Mal Waldron, Gary Burton, Paul Motian, Charlie Haden, Jan Garbarek et al. “The next beautiful sound after silence” shared a common aesthetic framework. Recording sound with crisp nuance, original songs of artists who hardly “swing”. There is a clear link with world music such as Nana Vasconcelos, Egberto Gismonti, Anouar Brahem, and critics have described it as a pioneer of “New Age Music”. Caribbean friends like Marius Cultier (Mazurka-beguine) recorded at the studio in the era of Herby Widmaier and Haiti, and Marius’s second album (recorded for Tamar for the first time) recorded with Ralph Tamar I can not forget the influence from. I personally think that Marius is a great composer and pianist of the Caribbean Clement Jazz.
In conclusion, Zèklè and Lakansyel are the names of different projects under the same roof. The former is a commercial pop-lock oriented, the latter is more based on jazz and world music. These two flows merged later.
Mushy Widmaier from liner notes to San Mele
If you have luxury of a coastline near by, imagine the tropical ambient jazz of “Port-Salut”, “Koté Ou” or “Kalalou” streaming by. Then, imagine the deep, open-hearted modal pop of “Sab Lan Me” or “Distances” coaxing you to dig in the sand. Milton Nascimento had it right before in Milagre dos Peixes: it’s a miracle of fishes. Once you’re off, the chasms go quite deep, in, seemingly, still waters. If you love plaintive, minimal electric piano, soft sax, meandering percussion, and quicksilver, wordless vocals, you’ll hear rare albums today as touching and wayfaring as this one.