Haiti Music Video > Emeline Michel Music Video > Newsletter

Emeline Michel Records Healing Songs for Haiti

June 30, 2013 8:01 AM

Emeline Michel, Haiti's First Lady of Song, has recently issued long-awaited album, Quintessence: The Healing Songs of Haiti. Originally envisioned as a collection of romantic love songs, Emeline was nearly done recording it when Haiti was shaken by the 2010 earthquake. The event forced her to reconsider the message of the album.

Mesi Lavi From New Album Quintessence:

More beautiful Music Videos by Emeline Michel

Recognizing she could still record love songs--but with a difference--she contacted the best writers to make a compilation album. She first contacted Edwidge Danticat, much-honored for her writings on Haitian family-culture myth and lore. She sent her lyrics to Emeline, who was moved to tears over Edwidge's ability to convey deeply soulful yearnings of a people beaten down, but whose spirits point heavenward nonetheless.

Over three years, Emeline worked with many talented music artists and writers to create portraits of Haitian perseverance despite seismic shifts in its government, blocking social and economic progress for its people. The songs, inspired by events in the daily lives of Haitians, bring attention to social concerns such as domestic violence. Other songs are older compositions that ring true now, for example "Freedom Bound".

EMELINE MICHEL - Sylvestre Renois:

Watch additional Music Videos from Emeline Michel

Emeline also sought out a grade-school children's choir she had heard of. Inclusion of their voices on the album represents the future of Haiti, its resiliency, and that it can overcome its status as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. By including these children on her album, she hopes to help them see a bright future is possible, that they must allow themselves to imagine it vividly.

More Haitian Music videos

Reply to this article