Many types of music, including Brazilian samba, Cuban son, Jamaican reggae and Colombian cumbia, are rightly considered true manifestations of Africa in the Western Hemisphere. But only compas, the African-based popular music of Haiti, lays claim to a particular authenticity by virtue of having originated in a place where African slaves successfully rebelled against their overlords and achieved independence. The quaint social dances favored by Haiti's former colonizers (particularly the French) were infused with the African rhythms that were unstoppable after a free republic was established.
Among the music and dances that developed in the wake of those dominant Africanisms was the Haitian meringue, similar to the Dominican merengue though with a jangly melodic sense that gave it a feel similar to early 20th-century ragtime music. When meringue was opened up and restructured to accommodate the big bands that were the norm by the 1940s, compas was born. The definition of compas has broadened over the years, but it can be aptly described as a music in which Haiti's African and European roots converge in a polyrhythmic whole with the African grooves always at the forefront regardless of whatever other refinements or fusions may be present. Given the ease with which compas evolved to incorporate ingredients borrowed from soukous, highlife, salsa and other African-originated styles, the contention that it is the West's purest representation of African music is all the more strengthened.
Though bandleader Nemours Jean-Baptiste is generally credited with putting Haiti's musical roots into a big-band context and creating compas (or compas direct, as it's also been known), others including Rene Saint-Aude with his Super Jazz Des Jeunes, Orchestre Tropicana and Issa El Saieh's Et Son Orchestre were key trailblazers as well. At its early peak, compas helped make the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince a center of exotic nightlife on a par with Havana. Rivalries friendly and not so friendly between compas bands and their leaders became more heated as competition for popularity among all classes of Haitians, in addition to foreign tourists and celebrities who partied at such nightspots as the famed Oloffson Hotel.
Eventually compas came to be the term by which Haitian popular music in general was known, though the music itself became slicker, more electric and stripped down with the advent of mini-jazz bands and greater traces of funk, soul and rock entering the picture. Compas also came to be heard on an increasing scale among the Haitian communities in locales like New York and Miami, thanks to the relocating of such groups as Tabou Combo, Shleu Shleu and Magnum Band. The post-Duvalier "new roots" movement known as mizik rasin or racines that was in full swing by the 1990s can be seen as a further step in the development of compas.
Various-artist albums like 1989's crackling Konbit! Burning Rhythms of Haiti (compiled by filmmaker Jonathan Demme) and the more recent but similarly excellent Rough Guide to the Music of Haiti have given the curious an opportunity to investigate the infectious nature of the Haitian sound. Listeners wise enough to tune in and get hooked soon find that the claim on the front cover of the Rough Guide is above dispute: "Compas: African Heartbeat of the Caribbean." Tom Orr
