Henrys / Ilan Kokoda CD

They say the flowers of the ilang-ilang tree (ilan-ilan in Haitian Creole) have a very soothing fragrance. They used to grow in abundance in the Port-au-Prince region and have a positive influence on one's emotions... This album is the outcome of a project that began in the early Eighties, the fruit of the wonderful association between the musician Ren?l (Reynold Henrys) and the late anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, who died in 2012. Ren?l here gives new life to popular rhythms that lie at the heart of Haiti's incredibly rich folk heritage (Kokoda, Kontredans, Petwo, Igbo etc.), in songs that Michel-Rolph Trouillot revisited with his pen. The warm, twilight voice of Ren?l is sustained by the sumptuous guitar of Serge Tamas and contributions from two tambouy?s (the percussionists Fran?ois Domergue and Ren? Dambury. This marvelous music is a gem of rare precision, and it mingles poetry and the music of the Creoles with a very contemporary sense of tradition.