By Katheline St Fort
Haitian Times Staff

Emeline Michel is the ultimate star, so much so that every one of her album’s releases are celebrations in themselves. “Cordes et Ame (Chords and Soul),” her 2000 release on her Cheval de Feu label, amazed fan and foe. As if the deep-reaching lyrics weren’t amazing enough, the music was poetic, profound and more stunning than any compositions heretofore done by Ms. Michel.

It had an international-aura sounding around it, all while maintaining home flavor and spotlighting home issues, like in the song “Viejo,” in which her dark-colored voice recounted the lamentable situations of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic’s harsh sugar cane plantations.
Her newest album “Rasin Kreyòl (Creole Roots)” is by all resemblance, a continuation of this theme of uncertain identity, quiet misery but all the while dignified pride.

With “Rasin Kreyòl,” Michel proves she’s an extraordinary talent, with growth as the only objective on the agenda, as if we needed another reminder. But man is forgetful, and the empress needs to remind them of her prowess at every turn.
Every wise empress knows that while she’s supreme, the subjects under her -when wielded correctly - will intensify the cement of her kingdom’s inlays. On “Rasin Kreyòl” Michel is accompanied by the powerfully voiced James Germain, Myriam Barthelus, Emmanuel and Beethova Obas, Dadou Pasquet; and an array of sharp musicians Welmyr Jean-Pierre, Makarios Césaire, Gashford Guillaume, Adrien Legagneur, Frederic Las Fargeas, Markus Schwartz and others.

The album launches off with partial a cappella of “Bèl Kongo,” a traditional song, usually hummed by washerwomen at the river’s shore on laundering day. Michel’s signature voice, full of breathless passion and desperate urgency, the sort that leads one to believe she will burst into tears at any moment, transforms the era-old ballad into an urgent call to wash not just one’s personal linens, but the dirty linens of an entire nation, even - Michel sings- the ones not worth washing.

In the sophomore song “Banm La Jwa,” co-arranged by Philippe Augustin, she experiments with rara rhythms that started with her song “Plezi Mizè (Nino)” in the 1980s. It’s her private supplication for personal happiness and an invocation for spiritual and emotional baggage clearance. Her voice zigzags through the drums and kornet trumpet by musician James “Tiga” Jean-Baptiste.
“Beni Yo” at first makes one feel as if Emeline has at last yielded to molding; that her unique style has been diluted. It sounds like something Benin-born Afropop singer Angelique Kidjo or Mali singer Salif Keita might sing.

This CD is after all, her first in years to be co-produced by an outside company and a U.S.-based label. It starts off with a spoken word introduction of a text by Ernst Pepin. As soon as the song is fully absorbed, with Dominique Kanza’s guitar striking, one is reassured that the empress has not sold out and is merely leasing. The Pepin introduction makes allusions to Louis Delgres, a Martinique-born mulatto, who later became a famed revolutionary in Guadeloupe, as well as other black greats such as soccer player Pele, reggae pioneer Bob Marley, boxing legend Mohamed Ali and slave revolt insurgents Toussaint L’ouverture and François Mackandal.

But Michel wants to teach more than historical trivia; she wants to give tribute to those who “endangered their life for peace/Who always count themselves last”.
“Nasyon Solèy (Nation of the Sun)” is Michel’s way of waking up pretentious members of the Diaspora from their illusion-filled reveries. “We are not Diaspora,” she reminds them with Bobby Raymond’s bass hammering in the background, “We’re just trapped.”
Michel knows all too well of the Diaspora who land at Mais Gaté airport with their sweat-shop sown, designer clothes, cholesterol-begotten pot bellies and bleached faces, overworked veins - all excesses done to compensate for underachieving the American Dream. The song is made more meaningful with a little prelude of Michel passing on the lullaby “Dodo Ti Pitit” to her New York-born toddler son. It’s about handing over a precious heritage, not “building other people’s cities” while forsaking your own.

Better days are covered in “La Karidad,” a song whose title refers to a little neighborhood she lived in during her teen years. Michel broods on the days when big band Tropicana rehearsed nearby, when there was innocence and serenity. Lisa Perott’s nostalgic saxophone notes coupled with Yves Abel’s calm bass bring to mind idyllic days of adolescent crushes, dark coffee and corn shake breakfasts.

An Emeline Michel album without at least one love song, is like a spiceless Caribbean dish. It just never happens. “Nonm Sa-a (This Man Here)” is the sort of love ballad audiences have come to expect of the singer and she sings it with the same vocal abandonment that she sings “Pa Gen Manti Nan Sa (There’s No Lying in That,” from 1990s “Tout Mon Temps”; and “Flanm (Flame),” released in the 1980s.

“This man dances in my head,” she confesses in a Cheetah-purr. “The day he approaches me/All lets loose/I’ll take [Holy Communion] without confessing.” The love she envisions isn’t totally careless.
“Zikap,” the song that tailgates “Nonm Sa-a,” is a cautionary song about AIDS, with a melodious chorus backed by Azouke, Grégory Sanon and Hérold Josué. The metaphor-abundant song demonstrates that Michel is a master manipulator of her native language. “Beauty doesn’t mean healthy,” she admonishes. “The beast can hide anywhere/Danger doesn’t come with a honking horn.”
“Soufle Van” is such a mind-blowing interlude/bridge. Emeline and James Germain hum majestically, with awesome power, as if they were competing with some intrusive wind. The interlude carries such weight that it feels as if it should have been a song in itself.

“Lòm Kanpe,” which along with “Nasyon Solèy,” ranks as the most resonant song on “Rasin Kreyòl,” trails the exquisite interlude. Serge Decius’s conga and percussion, topped with Michel’s arrangement and a bass by Gino Sitson - along with a James Germain-backed chorus - gives the song a majestic and splendid form. “When I stand up/You will see how tall I am,” Michel sings her voice full of pride and stateliness. “There is a boat at your shore/And You tell my people to re-embark,” she continues in no doubt a reference to the repatriation of refugees. Each line is more biting than the other. She continues: “You have been leaning on me for so long/But you said that I don’t count.” In those verses, Michel is dissecting her homeland’s invisibility. Its 1791 slave revolt had by all accounts caused a domino effect in the Americas, yet its contributions have been belittled, diminished. Her country through her eyes is like some overachieving wife, whose cruel husband always finds a way to downsize.

“They’re squeezing you/Even while looking you straight in the eye,” Michel sings of detractors and hypocritical exploiters. The situation of immigrants who come speaking only passable English and with null degrees (made useless either by the fact that the ineffectiveness of the Haitian school system or because after the conclusion of schooling there’s no future) is highlighted in the lines: “Scholars from my homeland/Are chopping meat in McDonalds.” The Haitian system has often been criticized for emphasizing recitation instead of application, undoubtedly leading to its uselessness once a student under such a system enters the United States. No wonder, as Michel sings, “The youth of my homeland are giving up.”
“Bò Kote-w,” the only song with music not composed by Michel, is produced by Daniel Beaubrun. It’s half love song to a man, half to her country. “So many evil people want to spoil all we did,” she sings alongside the Obed Calvaire drumming, Ozzie Melendez trombone playing and Barry Danielian trumpeting. “By your side, I will stand.”

This song is followed by a spoken word intermission in which Nili Belkind repeats a Hebrew verse, followed by Michel’s own version in French. This is quite a significant inheritance as in recent decades Haitians have arguably supplanted Jews as the nomad people of the Earth, producing hyphenated communities in the most remote places on the planet.

“Mon Rêve (My Dream),” which follows a brief intermission, is wordless. It’s best that Ms. Michel doesn’t whisper a word of the dream that she has for herself or for her country. Marauders are at bay, and they will surely find a way to taint it before it’s even in realization mode.