This year’s New Orleans Saints have made “Next Man Up” their mantra. When linebacker Jonathan Vilma had an emergency and couldn’t make it to Morton’s Steakhouse for a Celebrity Server fundraiser for the Jonathan Vilma Foundation Monday night, defensive end Will Smith stepped up to act as host. “I was coming anyway,” Smith said. “So [...]
Tag Archives: Haiti
YouTube du Jour: Wyclef Jean, Bill Summers, and Irvin Mayfield
June 21, 2011 – 1:27 pm
Tonight, master percussionist Bill Summers performs at his former Los Hombres Calientes bandmate Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse. In this video, Summers and Mayfield joined Wyclef Jean, in town for his first weekend Jazz Fest performance, for a benefit show for Haiti put on by the New Orleans Haitian Relief Task Force. The private gig was [...]
RAM of Haiti: A Leaf Too Far
May 1, 2011 – 12:13 am
It was just a song about a leaf, but at a certain time, I’m told, like seemingly anything in Haiti, it could get you killed. “Fèy” was that kind of hit-slash-occupational hazard for RAM, the Parliament Funkadelic-sized cast of Haitian dancers and folkloric musicians who performed it. The track itself sounds more sedative than seditious: [...]
Haitian Singer Manno Charlemagne Comes to New Orleans
November 5, 2010 – 6:00 am
Haitian singer Manno Charlemagne will visit Louisiana this November for a musical residency. Charlemagne is known in his home country as a longtime activist and musical agitator for democracy, and as the one-time mayor of the capitol city of Port Au Prince. The destruction of his home in the January earthquake left him stranded in [...]
Charlemagne Coming to New Orleans
June 22, 2010 – 9:23 am
Manno Charlemagne is a virtual unknown in the United States. Bernard Pearce of One Man Machine hopes to change that. This fall, he’ll be bringing the Haitian singer to Louisiana for a month-long residency. In his native Haiti, Charlemagne has been known for decades as a folk singer and political activist. Forced into exile by [...]
Mutemath at the Howlin Wolf: Concert Review
March 22, 2010 – 10:12 am
Almost three months have passed since the 2010 Haiti earthquake, but New Orleans rock band Mutemath kept relief efforts alive when it played a Haiti Benefit Concert at The Howlin’ Wolf on Saturday night. The earthquake resulted in over 200,000 deaths in January, but it was not a night for a solemn tribute. Mutemath walked onstage in the [...]
Haiti Benefit and Patois International Human Rights Film Festival Kickoff Tonight
March 11, 2010 – 1:37 pm
Tonight kicks off the 7th annual Patois International Human Rights Film Festival, which will be screening films around New Orleans through Sunday, March 21. To kick off the festival, a benefit concert for the relief efforts of Partners in Health in Haiti is being held at Maison on Frenchmen St. The show will be hosted [...]
YouTube du Jour: Haitian Drum Ensemble
January 13, 2010 – 2:15 pm
Want to help Haiti? NPR has a good blog post here with some suggestions of what you can do. Yesterday, Tuesday January 12, a 7.0 earthquake struck just outside Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Although it’s too soon to know the extent of the damage, the initial reports look devastating. This disaster seems to hit [...]
Iko Iko: In Search of Jockomo
April 1, 2009 – 12:01 am
One afternoon, 1965, the three Louisianan sisters/cousins who gave you “Chapel of Love,” unaware that the studio’s tapes were still rolling, recorded for posterity two minutes of delightful historical intrigue that had been circulating in oral obscurity for generations unknowable. “Iko, Iko,” they called that tune. The English chunks of the record came from an [...]
Festival International: The World Comes to Lafayette
April 1, 1993 – 12:01 am
I always face the same dilemma when asked to write about Festival International de Louisiane. Part of me wants the world to know about this truly wonderful free outdoor music festival in the heart of Acadiana, but another part of me worries that the very elements that make Festival International so charming—its small scale and [...]
