Twoubadou, Pt. 2

For this program, the second of a two-part excursion into Haitian Twoubadou music, DJ Richard Nixon of tropical sound system Don Flan returns to bring you a danceable set of tunes selected from some of the very few recordings that exist of twoubadou in its classic form.

Twoubadou, derived from the french for “troubadour,” is music of the common man, closely related socially, thematically, and musically to Cuban son and Dominican bachata. It is often described as having been brought back from Cuba by the returning Haitian cane-cutters who worked the sugar plantations of Cuba on a short-term contract basis during the explosion of US-owned agribusiness there in the 1920s and 30's. Kreyol remains the second-most commonly spoken language in Cuba, and large populations of Haitians and their descendants still live around Ciego de Avila, Camagüey and in parts of the Cuban Oriente. This set features exclusive, never previously broadcast recordings of the Ensemble Hotel de la Place de Jacmel made in the late 1990s.

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