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What do we really know about Bois-Caïman?
Geographic coordinates, 19° 43’ 24’’ north, 72° 16’ 20’’ west, a place in the north of Haiti; you have to cross Carrefour La Mort, Moustique, enter Lenormand house, find yourself facing a large, frumpy tree, two rocks, painted red, painted blue, the colors of the national Haitian flag. It is here, exactly, that on August 14, 1791, fugitives killed a pig, drank his blood, they beat the drums, dug up hymns from countries from which we never return and they launched, that night of fire and mist, the only slave revolution that resulted in liberation.
What was Jowee Omicil thinking on July 6, 2020, when he entered his living room–studio in Paris; a pantry, a cabinet of curiosities, which resembles all the provincial voodoo temples: spaces where you place objects and they take the form of dreams immediately. On July 6, 2020, let’s remember, it was another world, confined, we knew nothing yet. A time of pause and confinement, where the people passing through the walls were often imaginary and always masked. What happened in Jowee’s head that made him start blowing the revolution of his ancestors that day? And to bring a breath of fresh air to a world that smelled musty.We have always thought of Jowee as an avatar, a remake of the end of the century, Hip-Hop replica of the God Legba. The Goatee of a youthful old man, the bad tricks of the patron saint of crossroads, whose wisdom has the sweet taste of hoax. In fact, he is perhaps more of a flashback to Agaou, spirit of winds, storms and thunder, who is never seen without his rush cane. His song goes something like this: « Agaou blows, it’s windy. He sells the North-East, he sells the South-West. Agaou is not here. Agaou leaves Guinea. It’s windy, it’s rumbling. They don’t need me anymore. They call me old thing. »Faced with an asphyxiated world, Jowee brought together all his inner tubes, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Wood, Clarinets, Piccolo flute, Cornet, that blows, that winds, that rumbles. It is a long exorcism Ceremony, to sweep the earth of bad air. Jowee-Agaou, like Aeolus his Greek double, frees the winds. It’s not a joke. This record is an incantation, a therapy, it cleanses the world by drawing on the fantasized memory of the Haitian revolution. “SpiriTuaL HeaLinG: Bwa KaYimaN FreeDoM SuiTe” is at the crossroads of medicine and the story told to children, it is a lullaby and a call to insurrection.
For Jowee, a kid from Montreal, son of a Haitian pastor, who sang Jesus in all the tones, and then Michael Jackson, and then 2Pac, who learned jazz from the one who deconstructed it (Ornette Coleman, another master of the wind, in his loft in Manhattan), the ceremony necessarily has the taste of free. There are Freedom Suites, by Sonny Rollins, by Max Roach, others; prayer music, music capable of breaking the chains in the head before starting them on the wrists, music of black power and white magic. Music that does not distinguish between battle and consolation.
For this long improvisation, divided into 21 stations which are so many rituals, Jowee Omicil raised a small army of Creoles by heritage and Creoles by vocation. Keyboards by Randy Kerber and Jonathan Jurion; the percussions of Arnaud Dolmen and Yoann Danier & Jendah Manga’s bass. They are not afraid of anything together, neither of depths nor of beauty, they hunt down mythological animals, exhume sunken continents, they demand from sound what the eyes cannot see. From this mystical enterprise, all the secrets remain intact. It remains an incredible experience of freedom. Arnaud Robert 2023
Thank you to the Soldiers that accompanied me: Jendah Manga, Arnaud Dolmen, Jonathan Jurion, Randy Kerber & Yoann Danier. My Label BasH! Village, Records staff, My entire Family & the supporters.
Credit Photo by Yann Zitouni, Cover designed by Yannick Le Vaillant
Recorded by Yann Noel & Olivier Rollin at Midilive Studios July 6TH 2020.
ALBUM DEDiCATED to ORNETTE COLEMAN.
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Background Photo by Yann Zitouni