Globalisation is defined as ‘the intensification of cross-national interactions that promote the establishment of trans-national structures and the global integration of cultural, economic, ecological, political, technological and social processes on global, supra-national, national, regional, and local levels’ (Reference Martins, Akin, Maud and MohsinMartins, Akin, Maud & Mohsin 2010, 1). It is responsible for massive flows of information and exchange that move across communities and cultures, where it opens and even dismantles borders, connecting people in far-flung corners. With globalisation, the global suddenly becomes localised, and the local globalised, generating a host of new knowledges and practices, themselves complex syntheses of different meanings and ethos.

Music, because of its ‘malleability’ (Reference TaylorTaylor 1997), easily adapts to new geographies imposed by globalisation. Able to fuse the local with the global, ‘tradition’ with ‘modern’, music can accommodate disparate social or community needs while simultaneously assert new ways of viewing and being in the world. When music travels it blends with and appropriates nearly every range of sounds and rhythms, a phenomenon that has given rise to a host of new, hybrid musics. Yet, ‘enmeshed in the complex power-laden relations between local worlds and larger systems’ (Reference LockardLockard 1998, 266), they are caught in cycles of appropriation and consumption that, in the end, transform them into commodities – commodities that today make up what we today term as ‘world music’.

‘World music’ is a complex term that remains the subject of heated debate and, because it encapsulates a wide range of meanings and uses, remains difficult define (Reference Anakesa KululukaAnakesa Kululuka 2002). It involves ‘folk music, art music, or popular music’, argues Philip Reference BohlmanBohlman (2002, 9).

The term ‘world music’ was formally introduced in 1987 by a group of UK record company producers, broadcasters, and journalists who sought to brand the non-Western musics that were gaining popularity with Western listeners. Yet, ‘world music’ was a marketing concept, not a philosophical one. And this meant it could generalise differences; it could threaten the particularisms or uniqueness of the set musics. The label could too easily be affixed to other essentialised descriptors already in use by the West: extra-European music, extra-Western music, exotic music, primitive music, and ethnic music – these were the tags employed by the West to define musics of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, which, once compressed into that single label of ‘world music’, simply strengthened the imaginary boundary already separating the West (‘us’) and the world (‘them’).

The French Caribbean was drawn into these complexities with the mass-distribution of konpa and zouk, which are still considered national symbols of Antillean identity. Both globalisation and the development of ‘world music’ led to the evolution of konpa and zouk, as well as their continued metamorphoses. Konpa and zouk were taken from their island nations and propelled onto the global stage, where they were reconfigured and revamped by different music-makers, for different listeners and aimed at different purposes. This chapter follows the journeys of konpa and zouk. The first section provides overviews of both genres, carefully emphasising their Creole beginnings. The second section focusses on how globalisation and ‘world music’ marketing have individually and collectively impacted on the two genres over the years.

Origins of Konpa and Zouk

Konpa is a popular Haitian musical genre, whose name, translated as ‘compass’, reflects the music’s straight-ahead beat and its fixed rhythmic pulse. Konpa was first developed by a small group of musicians from the band Ensembles aux Calebasses, who began experimenting with and combining a variety of local musics. The Haitian guitarist Raymond Gaspard, from Ensembles aux Calebasses, is credited with naming this newly created Creole music konpa-dirèk (‘direct compass’), which was later reduced to konpa.

The roots of konpa are difficult to unravel, and signify the complex cultural interactions that frequently occurred between the Dominican Republic and Haiti (the two countries share the island of Hispaniola). Konpa developed out of the Dominican merengue, specifically the merengue cibaeño, which is considered that country’s oldest merengue style. Merengue cibaeño characteristically was divided into three parts: it began with a short, introductory paseo, which signalled to the dancers that they could join the dancefloor; this was followed by the melody section, known as merengue; an improvisatory and more rhythmic jaleo section served as the third and final part.

Merengue cibaeño was a rural music from the northern valley region of the Dominican Republic that President Rafael Trujillo used to reaffirm a sense of nationhood in the country that was tied to ‘agrarian simplicity and rural nostalgia’ (Reference BunceBunce 1994, 29). Trujillo initially enlisted this merengue as a vehicle for acquiring the necessary rural support to become president. Once elected, however, Truijillo continued to rely on the merengue cibaeño as a tool for political reform. He required top merengue bands to be named after him and requested propaganda songs be written about him and performed in his honour. With his brother, Truijillo also established the radio station LaVoz Dominicana, which gave radio play solely to the merengue cibaeño. LaVoz Dominicana, therefore, emerged central in strengthening the Dominicans’ national acceptance of this merengue style.

One of Trujillo’s aims in securing merengue cibaeño as a national symbol was to ensure that the Dominican Republic acquired a sense of identity that was distinctly separate to Haiti. In fact, over the decades Trujillo used the merengue to institutionalise an anti-Haitianism movement that would rigorously separate Dominicans from Haitians. Given the merengue’s connections with anti-Haitian sentiments, it seems all the more paradoxical, then, that merengue cibaeño would acquire such a strong fanbase in Haiti. Yet, nonetheless, merengue cibaeño emerged hugely popular: LaVoz Dominicana was accessible in Haiti, and the regular airplay merengue cibaeño received secured its success in Haiti. Cuban music already enjoyed success in Haiti during this time, due largely to a Latin dance craze that had swept through the Caribbean during the 1940s and 1950s. Haitian dance clubs as a result were regularly featuring the Cuban son and mambo, performed either by live bands or via recordings, as shared by local DJs. In the beginning merengue cibaeño was simply played alongside the popular Cuban music at these urban clubs. However, when in 1953 saxophonist and Ensembles aux Calebasses band leader Nemours Jean-Baptiste, along with other band members Gaspard and accordionist Richard Duroseau, began experimenting with and changing the merengue cibaeño, a new musical genre emerged – which Gaspard later coined as konpa.

The musicians had altered the merengue cibaeño by expanding its third and final part (jaleo) with longer, repetitive call-and-response sections. The basic instrumental line-up of the Dominican merengue was maintained, specifically keeping the saxophone and accordion on the melody. However, they added a host of different instruments, including bass guitars, cymbals, the graj (a traditional Haitian instrument made from spiked tin that is scraped), and tanbou (a traditional Haitian barrel drum). They also slowed its tempo, and introduced an innovative polyrhythm that combined the familiar two-beat merengue motif, played by the bass, with a three-beat motif, presented first by the graj before being passed to the tanbou around the eighth beat. It was in 1955 that this new dance rhythm was christened with the title ‘konpa’ and that it received its first recorded performance, with Ensemble aux Calebasses playing Jean-Baptiste’s composition, ‘Deux Petites Calebasses’.

Ensemble aux Calebasses had been the house band at the Dominican-influenced Club aux Palmistes, located in Port-au-Prince. However, with the success of ‘Deux Petites Calebasses’, the band quickly began performing at other urban venues around the city and its vicinity. The patrons at these clubs – clubs that included Cabane Choucoune, Aux Calebasses, and Sous Les Palmistes – were predominantly from the middle-class. Yet, as Jean-Baptiste and his band began performing at celebratory events across Haitian provinces and in the rural areas, like fèt chanpèt (countryside festivals) and fèt patwonal (patron’s day festivals), konpa assumed supporters from across the classes. Soon after, Jean-Baptiste began receiving commissions from various businesses, including Stepover Shoes and Les Milkies, to write catchy konpa as adverts. Jean-Baptiste’s economic successes with his performances and commercial jingles soon inspired more musicians across the country to organise their own konpa bands.

The mid-1950s saw fierce competition between Jean-Baptiste and this former band member, saxophonist Wébert Sicot. This time-period became known as the ‘pok polemik Nemou ask Siko’, translated as ‘the period of the controversy between Nemours and Sicot’. Sicot had left the Ensemble aux Calebasses after several years to form his own group, where he hoped he could create his own inventive versions of konpa. Through that experimentation, Sicot introduced numerous changes, including the addition of a second drum, used to accentuate the fourth beat of each second measure, and the integration of the Cuban son clave rhythm, which was still very popular in Haiti. With these alterations, yet another new musical style was crafted, called kadans rampa. The style continued to evolve through the years, adopting changes usually in the effort to more closely replicate Cuban music. This included predominantly the addition of more specific Cuban-recognised instruments, like maracas, congas, bongos, cowbells, and acoustic guitars.

The rivalry between Jean-Baptiste and Sicot was heated throughout the year. However, their competition was perhaps most visible during carnival season, when each wore his specific colours of distinction: Jean-Baptiste in red and white, and Sicot in red and black. Their fans, too, showed their allegiance by wearing the specific colours of their favoured band. The fierceness of their rivalry was also captured in carnival song: for example, the lyrics of Jean-Baptiste’s song ‘Rythme commercial’ (1962) questioned Sicot’s supposed talents by complaining that Sicot was simply copying his own experimental style. During carnival, bands regularly amplified their instruments and used powerful sound systems as tools to conquer the crowds. Jean-Baptiste and Sicot’s bands were known to challenge each other through these massive sound systems, even cranking up the bass in an attempt to drown out the rival group. The clash between Jean-Baptiste and Sicot was made even more public when President François Duvalier aired his preference for Jean-Baptiste, while his son Jean-Claude announced his fondness for Sicot.

During the 1950s, konpa travelled to and gained popularity in the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Dominica, where it joined the already popular European-based parlour dances – specifically the beguine and mazurka. As historical background, the beguine developed in the town of Saint-Pierre in Martinique during the nineteenth century as a blend of the local African-based bèlè and French ballroom dance rhythms; and the Creole mazurka was an African-inspired offshoot of the Polish mazurka that emerged in nineteenth-century Martinique as a formal ballroom dance. When konpa first arrived on Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Dominica it was simply included on the repertoire lists of the islands’ popular bands, played alongside the biguine and mazurka. In time, however, these islands’ bands began experimenting with their beloved biguine and mazurka, blending and extending them with the rhythms of konpa. Guadeloupean saxophonist Paul-Emile Halliar and his ensemble L’Orchestre Jeunesse, notably, created a biguine-inspired konpa during the 1950s with the compositions ‘Biguine fisée’ and ‘Chofè a camion’.

By the 1970s, the popularity of biguine and mazurka had declined considerably across Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Dominica. Konpa, in particular kadans rampa, on the other hand, continued to gain an audience base, even becoming the most featured music on regional radio. As gradually happened, the label kadans rampa was shortened on the three islands to cadence. A plethora of new local cadence bands soon emerged: Selecta and La Perfecta, from Martinique, and Les Aiglons, from Guadeloupe, were among the most popular. In Dominica, there developed yet another new konpa version, with the bands Exile One, Grammacks, and Bill-O-Men recognised as its earliest innovators. This Dominican-based style that emerged integrated elements from both the Trinidad calypso – calypso had become wildly popular in Dominica, even integrated into the island’s carnival festivities during the 1960s – and the traditional jing-ping – an African-inspired music from Dominica, known colloquially as ‘accordion group music’ due to its heavy reliance on the accordion. This new Dominican style soon acquired the name cadence-lypso.

A wide range of musics now dominated the French Caribbean: cadence, konpa, jing-ping, biguine, calypso, cadence-lypso, as well as the more traditional Guadeloupean gwoka, Martinican bélè, and the Martinican carnival music, vidés. These musics were popularly played at all-night parties on Guadeloupe and Martinique during the 1970s, and appropriately acquired the collective title of mizik zouk, which translates as ‘party music’. In 1979, the Guadeloupe musicians Jacob Desvarieux, on guitar, and bassist brothers Pierre-Edouard and Georges Décimus, all residing in Paris at the time, formed the band Kassav’. Kassav’ deliberately mixed all these different musics from the mizik zouk parties and then added contemporary electronic studio effects to the mix. The end-result was a new musical genre that they simply called zouk. Featuring on the Kassav’ ground-breaking album Love and ka danse (1979), zouk was propelled on to the global stage.

Back in Haiti, the growing popularity of both Cuban music and American rock during the 1960s and 1970s led to the development of yet another konpa style: konpa mini djaz, its name taken from both the French word for jazz and American fashion, specifically the miniskirt. This new konpa style first appeared in Pétion-Ville, a middle-class suburb of Port-au-Prince, where son and rock were particularly popular. Among the first konpa mini djaz groups to emerge were Tabou Combo, Les Difficiles de Pétion-Ville (also known as DP Express), and Les Frères Déjean. These were quickly followed by other bands, many of which, like Shleu-Shleu, Magnum Band, and Volo Volo, eventually moved to New York City, where konpa had already been gaining supporters among growing Haitian migrant communities.

Konpa and Zouk in the Era of Globalisation and World Music

Neither konpa nor zouk were free from the influences of globalisation and the ‘world music’ phenomena. They emerged as by-products of local and global processes and, as such, were shaped and reshaped by the interplay of regional, national, and international influences. They gave birth to new styles, which consequently were infused with new meanings. They drew upon and incorporated both the familiar and the foreign, creating konpa and zouk versions that were concurrently new, contemporary, and ‘French Caribbean’. In this section, we discuss the transformative impact globalisation and ‘world music’ marketing has had on konpa and zouk through some of their notable sub-genres.

The first sub-genre we discuss is konpa mini djaz, a derivative of dirèk konpa that combined konpa and American jazz. According to Gerdès Reference Fleurant and KussFleurant (2007), jazz arrived in Haiti with the American servicemen who were stationed in the country during the 1920s and 1930s. These servicemen brought with them popular music recordings and musical instruments, exposing the locals to the big band sounds of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bix Beiderbecke. Intrigued, Haitians began organising their own big jazz bands, and the country’s elite began hiring these bands to provide entertainment in their homes during carnival. While the earliest Haitian jazz bands may have consciously imitated what they heard on available American recordings, in time musicians began experimenting with the genre by incorporating local influences and musical styles. The first transformation came during the 1940s, when jazz bands began adopting aspects from the local Vodou religion, more specifically, the rhythms of yanvalou, the dance music honouring the deity Danbalah, and those from the Petwo (Creole-based) and Ibo (Nigerian-based) pantheons. Le Jazz des Jeunes and L’Orchestre Septentrional were among the most popular of such bands to emerge on Haiti.

During the 1970s, jazz began blending with dirèk konpa, which created the new genre of konpa mini djaz. For many musicians and audiences, konpa mini djaz became a voice of protest, a tool for complaining against the rising authoritarianism in Haiti. Those bands that produced more politicised konpa tackled such topics of discrimination and economic inequality. They were referred to as angajé, from the French word engagé (engaged). Examples of angajé songs included Magnum Band’s ‘Libèté’, which complained about the harsh realities confronting Haitian immigrants who sought a better life by emigrating to the United States: upon arrival, however, they faced deportation or even imprisonment by American immigration officers, as these lyrics indicate:

The konpa mini djaz singer Ti-Manno became famous for using his lyrics to speak out against the discrimination Haitians faced both in and outside Haiti. His song ‘Nan Danjé’ (We Are in Danger) captures his frustration with the complex racism and discrimination Haitians experienced across the United States, as these lyrics testify:

Throughout the 1980s, angajé assumed particular popularity among the Haitian communities living in New York, Boston, and Montreal, and they soon renamed the music ‘Freedom Culture’. Tabou Combo was one of the most popular bands of ‘Freedom Culture’, their 1991 hit ‘Yo’ capturing the complex challenges Haitians faced in their home country, as these lyrics indicate:

During the 1980s, an underground movement in Haiti formed in parallel with the US-based ‘Freedom Culture’, whereby Haitian youths visited peristyles or Vodou temples to learn ritual rhythms that could be reincorporated into their compositions. It was the meeting of this underground Haitian movement and the US ‘Freedom Culture’ that helped to create a new musical style, neo-rasin or ‘roots music’. This innovative music consciously blended urban popular musics from Haiti and the United States with the traditional Vodou rhythms, and it became the new chief medium of political and social commentary among Haitians living in both Haiti and the United States. Some of the more popular neo-rasin bands to emerge included Boyukman Eksperyans, Boukan Ginen, and RAM.

Whereas konpa mini djaz assumed popularity primarily with Haitian audiences, zouk’s popularity extended across the French Creole-speaking Caribbean. It became a quick marker of French Antillean identity and pride. It was sung in Creole – not French and not English; and its topics were specific to life in the French Caribbean. It was a music made by and for French Antilleans. Its regional popularity ignited the birth of numerous zouk styles, including the fast-paced zouk béton, which, popularly known as ‘zouk hard’, was commonly used during carnival; and the slower tempo zouk love, which, as the title suggests, incorporated lyrics with more romantic themes.

Following zouk’s increased popularity during the 1980s was a decline in demand for konpa. Zouk had become the voice of Antillean identity, a position that konpa never acquired in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Dominica. In becoming the preferred music there, konpa lost a large fanbase, and many konpa bands as a result faced a difficult future financially. Konpa musicians unsurprisingly turned to zouk in the hope of using its performance or composition techniques to reclaim their Antillean fanbase. Writes Gage Averill, ‘Some konpa bands concluded from zouk that there was a need to reduce the complexity of konpa, improve the vocals, and integrate female vocalists into the bands’ (Reference Averill, Guilbault, Averill, Benoit and Rabess1993, 86–7). Other bands, in the effort to reacquire a fanbase, employed fewer percussion instruments, while still others incorporated more extensive electronic technology.

Zouk reached its pinnacle of international popularity in 1984, with the Kassav’ hit ‘Zouk la Sé Sèl Médikaman Nou Ni’ (Zouk Is All the Medicine We Have). The song reached gold – a first for the French Caribbean; and it acquired fans now across North America, Europe, and Africa. With this new global stardom, however, came the perceived necessity among producers to make zouk more marketable and more attractive to non-French speaking audiences. In response to producer demands, by the 1990s, zouk had changed dramatically. French, for example, replaced Creole as the dominant language of zouk. Similarly, more popularised lyrics about love and romance replaced zouk’s more topical Antillean themes, and the genre became even more electronic, with many songs now comprising a sole computer-produced backing track over which a vocalist would sing in French. What had made zouk so attractive in the 1980s – its use of the Creole language and integration of Antillean themes – now became a rarity during the 2000s. Although some dance clubs and radio programmes in the Antilles as well as France still featured the 1980s zouk styles, such presentations were considered dated. 1980s zouk was considered the music of an older generation, and was accordingly renamed zouk rétro.

While the popularity of zouk and konpa may have declined in popularity during the 2000s, a new konpa-inspired musical style called nouvèl jénérasyon (new generation) managed to continue garnering a fanbase. Like zouk, nouvèl jénérasyon emerged during the 1980s. Initially made popular by musician Reginald Policard and former band members from Ibo Combo, nouvèl jénérasyon was a conglomerate of musical styles, from konpa and zouk to funk, reggae, and bossa nova. It also relied more heavily on technology, with synthesisers replacing horns and a drum machine used instead of conga or bongo. Nouvèl jénérasyon soon acquired a global fanbase with the band Carimi, which included the trio of musicians Mickael Guirand, Richard Cavé, and Carlo Vieux, and its synthesised 2001 pop hits ‘Ayiti (Bang Bang)’ and ‘Chagrin Kriminel’. As more nouvèl jénérasyon bands formed, the style continued to evolve. By the mid-2000s, for example, it had assumed an even more technologically polished style, with bands relying so extensively on synthesisers, drum machines, and computer software that they assumed the title ‘digital bands’. By the 2010s, nouvèl jénérasyon relied even more heavily on studio recording techniques by incorporating a broader range of musical rhythms by using synth riffs and percussion loops.

As gradually happened, nouvèl jénérasyon began adopting elements of hip-hop and rap and began utilising code-switching, moving between Creole, French, and English. These stylistic changes enabled nouvèl jénérasyon to maintain its contemporary, cutting-edge sound and to attract younger, mainstream audiences. One of the more popular of these young hip-hop-influenced nouvèl jénérasyon artists to emerge was Haitian President Michel Martelly’s eighteen-year old son Sandro, who went by the stage name Ti-Micky, Creole for ‘Little Micky’. The popularity of his first album, Attaché, which included the song ‘Nou Paré’, recorded with Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean and released for 2014’s carnival celebration, further propelled nouvèl jénérasyon to international heights, with fans now secured across the French and English Caribbean as well as Europe and North America.

Following in the footsteps of Ti-Micky was the duo T-Vice, which, comprising brothers Roberto and Reynaldo Martino (sons of celebrated konpa guitarist Robert Martino), further extended the nouvèl jénérasyon style to also include Jamaican dancehall and even flamenco. Like Ti-Micky, T-Vice collaborated with Wyclef Jean, but they also worked with a diversity of artists that included dancehall musician Buju Banton and the recognised nouvèl jénérasyon originator Carimi. Although based in Miami, T-Vice became recognised for tackling some of the more challenging issues facing Haitians living in the islands. Their song, ‘Welcome to Haiti’, sung in a combination of Creole and English, for example, was released after the brutal and deadly earthquake that rocked the country in 2010, and acknowledged the need for more foreign investment – seen by Ti-Vice as one of the strongest ways to ensure sustainable economic growth in Haiti:

‘Welcome to Haiti’ also conveyed the musician’s frustration at Haiti being so commonly linked to themes of poverty and crime by the international community:

Conclusion

Far from proposing a simple, reassuring description of the globalisation process, this chapter has foregrounded its benefits as well as its contradictions. It has emphasised how questions of origins and acculturation, particularly when tied to cultural capital within the music industry, demand more careful consideration. Both konpa and zouk are the products of a multi-dimensional dynamic of local and global factors, a complicated interplay that occurs when localities merge with international demands. Our discussion of the two musics, including their evolution, transformation, and key artists, demonstrates what can happen when local and global factors intersect; when musicians begin making decisions around the interests of the consumer or producer rather than their own; and when ‘world music’ becomes not just a marketing label but a set of ideas that come to characterise an entire people, culture, or region.

Paul Gilroy asks the question: ‘Once the music is perceived as a world phenomenon, what value is placed upon its origins in opposition to its contingent loops and fractal trajectories?’ (Reference Gilroy1991, 114). While the development of konpa and zouk may have thrust the French Caribbean onto the world stage, Antilleans living on the islands have complained that konpa and zouk’s popularity have led to essentialised representations of the French Caribbean, and have imposed on it a limited view of the region’s existing diversities. Their criticism underscores some of the complexities behind globalisation and ‘world music’, reminding us that cultural adaptation and appropriation are never straightforward nor are they ever simple.

With konpa and zouk we have guides to understanding the complicated impact globalisation and consumerism can have on Caribbean music. Like other popular musics across the islands, konpa and zouk stand at the crossroads of economics, culture, and politics, where they are forced to straddle commercialism and colonial expectations, and balance both local and global interests. On the one hand, konpa and zouk are governed by the whims of globalisation and the ‘world music’ market. Yet, on the other, they pilot their paths.

We end the chapter with a powerful set of lyrics from the Kassav’ hit ‘An-ba-chenn la’ (Under the Chain): ‘Very often we travel from our country to export our music. It is time that the world knows that the Antilles exist’. Yet, as Kassav’ reminds, once a music hits the global stage, its development is no longer certain nor can it be contained. ‘The wind is taking another direction’, the singer claims. ‘Zouk music is taking another direction.’ While these lyrics indicate the complex dislocations and uncertainties that accompany globalisation and ‘world music’, the Kassav’ song concludes with the simple resolve ‘That is zouk’ – words that well summarise the very politics of ‘world music’.