Great Unknowns from a Troubled Island

Following on from my Ibo Combo post, here's another great group, Les Difficiles de Petion-Ville, that's inexplicably obscure outside Haiti and its diaspora. This guitar band demonstrates a truly rare mastery of musical excitement - their records feature wave after wave of driving rhythms and tasty, stinging guitar riffs, further buoyed by catchy call-and-response vocal choruses (a typical Africanism). Great for dancing, this is music to animate the dead!


"Coq Qualite", their 5th album, is a superb example of their style of Konpa (a.k.a. Kompa, Compas). It's typically hard to come by - Sakapfet is probably the best online source, although you may need to telephone them to arrange international (i.e. non-US) shipping. I've been unable to find sound samples for this particular album, but here are samples from another (somewhat more laid-back on the whole, but track 07 gives a decent preview of what to expect on "Coq Qualite").

And here's a good reference for learning more about this style of music.