Enthusiast Music

CHOUK BWA & THE ÅNGSTRÖMERS

A traditional Haitian Mizik Rasin — roots music — band, Chouk Bwa, formerly Chouk Bwa Libète, realizes the source of a drum and dance style using percussion and call-and-response vocals that are infused with Haitian Vodou. « Chouk Bwa » means « Root » in Haitian creole.

Chouk Bwa was selected as a showcasing band at WOMEX 2015.

In September 2016 they meet the Brussels based duo The Ångströmers. This new project combines a new dub sensitivity and Haitian rhythm science and spirituality.

Modular synths and other vintage electronic instruments bring another dimension to Chouk Bwa’s music, although obviously it is always the band’s groove and fluent tempo that leads the energy of the ensemble: no laptops, no drum machines. There are certain freedoms that cannot be coerced. Even more, the electronic instruments are wired directly to the drums that feed them with impacts and caresses. All the Vodou families are there with their many rhythms and songs. Radical Vodou roots for urban audiences.

This new ensemble has performed at Siestes Electroniques (Toulouse, FR), Eastern Daze (Gent, BE), Explore the North (Leeuwarden, NL) in 2018 and at Trans Musicales de Rennes in 2019, among other gigs.

A new album has been released via Bongo Joe in May 2020 (see below).

DESIR & FIORINI

What if Viennese composer Franz Schubert would have travelled to Haiti and met the spirits of vodou in Carrefour la Mort ? What if we would travel back to an imaginary mixed XIXth Century ?

With their hyper-classical formula of a piano and a voice, Belgian piano player Fabian Fiorini and Haitian singer Renette Désir summon the spirit of German romantic composers together with vodou trance. They pay a twofold tribute to contemporary Haitian poetry and to the language of the Haitian of the street: Creole.

Their debut album has been released in 2019 via Belgian label el Negocito Records.