I Refugee from Guantánamo Bay: A Playlist for Haiti

As thousands of Haitians are violently denied asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border and many are forced onto deportation flights back to Haiti, the music of greater Haiti continues to be a guide to history’s brutalist rhymes. And on the island itself, music continues to be, as it has been for centuries, a reliable barometer of political, social, and environmental tremors. As historian Laurent Dubois put it in a 2009 roundtable, “Haitian music keeps reworking a long history of intense exchange even as it carries on and confronts cycles of exile.”

This playlist explores those intensities of exchange and those ongoing cycles of exile. While not meant to be an overview of Haitian music—with its deep archive of African, Kreyol, and transatlantic re-wirings—key traditions, styles and genres are certainly here, like kontradans, compas, rara, vodou, mizik rasin, as well as key musical encounters that have left their mark on Haiti’s music, like the influences of hip hop, disco, funk, soukous, and salsa. Legendary Haitian artists such as Tabou Combo, Boukman Eksperyans, DP Express, and Coupé Cloué are here, as well as a host of artists-- some in exile, some the children of exiles and refugees—making music across the diaspora, from New Orleans and Miami to Boston, Montreal, New York City, and Long Beach, California (such as Haitian-born DJ/producer Michael Brun, now based in New York, sampling a track from his father’s beloved 80s Port-au-Prince band Skandal). As the world witnesses this latest chapter in the targeting, detention, and deportation of Haitians, Haitian music—whether it’s coming from a rara parade in Pétionville, a carnival second line in New Orleans, or a hip hop club in Broward County—pushes back. These are songs of movement, not deterrence. These are songs that dance around the world’s borders, refusing disappearance with rhythmic languages of resistance, ceremony, beauty, and joy.