Jephte Guillaume

The latest release from Haitian beatmixer/vocalist/bassist/acoustic guitarist Jephthe Guillaume, a double CD entitled Voyage Of Dreams takes the sounds of Haitian rara and carnival music and certain Latin conventions and tosses the salad on the club dance-floor. As a result Jephthe is probably the most high-profile Haitian musical performer in the world today. While there must be incredible pressure to conform to the pressures of the market, Voyage Of Dreams evinces a helluva lot more heart and soul than many similar recordings in the genre.

Using the club cliché-beat as a heartbeat around which to introduce real percussion, and augmenting electronic keyboards with instruments such as flute, piano and brass instruments he has avoided much of the predictable sterility which afflicts clubland. There are many points of genuine performance here with lovely piano and flute interplay as well as Brazilian and rara beats. The compositions tend to build up a genuine head of steam as if a real performance were happening (which I suppose is). As an added bonus several vocalists and percussionists from the brilliant rara-pop group Boukman Eksperyans add a serious dose of reality. If you can get past the new-age gobbledy gook in the web-biography you might find that Voyage Of Dreams offers more than you think. RJ July 2003