Overview:
Have fun Brooklyn launched its 2025 season with a showcase of three Haitian feminine singers—Riva Precil, Talie Cerin and Mélissa Laveaux—whose performances highlighted Haitian spirituality, diaspora experiences and cultural resilience by way of music.
Have fun Brooklyn opened its 2025 season on the Prospect Park Bandshell on Friday, June 13, with a dynamic efficiency by three Haitian ladies artists – Talie Cerin, Mélissa Laveaux and Riva Precil – whose music wove collectively the religious, cultural and diasporic threads of Haitian identification and traditions.
Every artist introduced her personal distinct model and message, addressing points affecting the Haitian group in distinctly alternative ways.
Precil opened the night with a meditative efficiency, starting with a singing bowl and accompanied by Okai on the conch shell. Every music in her set was rooted in Haitian spirituality, devoted to totally different lwa (deities), as she defined to the viewers. The opening numbers have been meant to open the gates between our realm and the spirit realm, and symbolize a mix of custom steered by her modern imaginative and prescient.
The band anchored her hovering Vodou-inspired melodies with a fancy tapestry of sounds, with the rhythms beat out by Okai on the tambou on the middle.
Dancers Marx Frantz Dessources and Woodly Jaboin entered and exited, shifting to Okai’s rhythms. Lamarre Junior on bass and Dave on drums—each members of Lakou Mizik—punctuated the efficiency with cymbal thrives, whereas Kiki, a newcomer to the Brooklyn scene, added a roots-rock edge with hard-hitting guitar work.
“It’s an honor to be part of an all-woman Haitian lineup,” Precil stated to The Haitian Occasions earlier than the present, including that given the present state of affairs, she’s trying to “keep on the next vibration and radiate like to family and friends who’re going by way of it proper now and dealing with challenges.”
Highlights included “Grann Bwa,” devoted to the forest spirit, and “Simbi,” an irresistible groove from Enkantasyon. Precil’s set additionally featured “Mpral Fè maji a mache,” a sensual konpa monitor a few love spell; “Twa Fèy,” a twoubadou-style music she recorded together with her band Bohio Music; and “Se Bon,” carried out over an ibo rhythm. She closed with a high-energy rara that crescendoed to a robust end, Lamarre’s bass evoking the blaring vaksin horns typical of Haitian road processions.
Precil, who’s well-known to audiences within the tight-knit native music scene in Brooklyn, launched her fourth solo album, Enkantasyon, in March. She is going to subsequent carry out at BAYO at Barclays Heart on June 28.
Talie Cerin brings meditative storytelling
Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Cerin adopted with a deeply intimate and prayerful set. “Let’s take a deep breath collectively,” she stated initially. “All of those songs are prayers.”
Standing immobile within the mild, she eased into her set with the soothing “Solèy Midi”, the title music of her debut album, enveloping the viewers in a tranquil ambiance. The meditative method drew the viewers’s focus to her extraordinary vocals. Spare preparations and gradual tempos let her voice shine, enchanting listeners all through her set.
Accompanied by Marcus Lolo on keys, Fernando Saci on percussion, Eric Blesunas on bass, Mervin Toussaint on sax and flute, and vocalist Stephanie Rose, Cerin’s voice stood out in its quiet command. Her sister, videographer Mélodie Cerin, created visuals projected above the stage, reinforcing the themes of migration, reminiscence and identification.
“Proper now, it’s a precarious time for Haitians,” Cerin advised The Haitian Occasions forward of her efficiency. “My music is for everybody, however I primarily sing for Haitians. Proper now, we discover ourselves in a spot the place house has turn into too harmful for lots of us to remain, and has prompted us to flee to locations the place we’re additionally not welcome.
“So what do we have now?” stated Cerin, who relocated to Philadelphia after leaving Haiti. “On the finish of the day, all of the music that I sing is about making a hopeful imaginative and prescient for the longer term, for Haitians and Haiti and all marginalized folks.”
Her music attracts on her Haitian heritage in addition to the music of her adopted group.
“It’s my approach of constructing sense of the world,” she stated to The Haitian Occasions, and her approach of giving again to the 2 communities the place she is at house. Cerin is connecting the dots in her music, discovering frequent floor within the tradition by seamlessly mixing twoubadou, Haitian people music, Philly soul, and Jazz.
Her present venture, Miwa, is a multimedia music cycle premiering in November in Philadelphia’s Icebox Venture House. The efficiency will function orchestral preparations, video, and vocals by each Cerin and Stephanie Rose. The narrative follows eight ladies—4 Haitian and 4 Haitian-American—exploring the continuity and transformation of custom in migration.
Mélissa Laveaux closes with rhythmic fireplace
Laveaux, a Haitian-Canadian artist, closed the night together with her indie-rock interpretations of Haitian folklore and historical past. Performing with a bass, guitar and drum equipment, her set pulsed with rhythm and resistance, transcending any language limitations for many who couldn’t perceive the Haitian Creole lyrics.
Over the course of the night, all three artists performed their very own interpretations of conventional Haitian people songs like Kouzen” and “Se Bon.”
Chriss Rimpel, a longtime promoter of Haitian music who helped deliver Cerin and Precil to bigger phases, emphasised the night’s cultural significance.
“An all-Haitian ladies lineup opening a significant pageant in Brooklyn is an honor,” she advised The Haitian Occasions. “[Especially], when Haiti goes by way of quite a bit proper now, it’s uplifting to have fun Haiti.”
The night’s significance resonated not simply with the performers, however with the broader Haitian group.
“I’m actually excited to deliver this to a wider viewers,” Cerin stated. “All three of us do very totally different sorts of Haitian music, three very particular flavors of Haitian tradition that every one inform the identical love and could be very indicitive of New York, a hub for Haitian tradition.
“Haitian tradition has all these new iterations, and the three of us are emblematic of that.”
BRIC Chief Programming Director Deron Johnston acknowledged in his introduction: “I wish to thank all the artists that create that house for connection and pleasure and communication getting us by way of difficult instances. this present is totally a illustration of that.”