Haitian Compas Music

Info related to Haitian Compas Music

Konpa or Compasin French is a complex, ever-changing music that arose from European ballroom dancing, mixed with Haiti's Creole culture.

Side Note: The Compas is the most mispelled word in the haitian vocalulary, they call it Kompa, Konpa, Conpa, Compa, or Compas.

Nowadays noone knows the real spelling of the word but I can tell you that Nemour Jean Baptiste who is baptized the inventor of the Haitian music genre called it "Compas Direct".

Konpa is a refined music, played with an underpinning of 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, kompa was influenced by multiple genres, including calypso, salsa, soca and soukous.

Beginning in 1915, the American miltary occupation of Haiti brought swing and big band music, and Haitian musicians incorporated the swinging style into konpa. Among the artists ro rise to prominence was the group Les Jazz de Jeunes.

Konpa 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 kompa direct, while Sicot's sophisticated, Cuban-influenced cadence rampa was inaccessible to mainstream listeners.

If you want to know more about haitian compas music, read Music of Haiti on Wikipedia