Edy Brisseaux

There is a musician for whom music is the optimal means of communication with the Absolute. Some meditate. Others pray. Edy Brisseaux, on the other hand, addresses the divine through his trumpet; for it could be that the bubbles of harmony that hatch here and there within the music of the world are but the prolonged and bursting echoes of the original, plural harmony. It is this desire to create a music nourished by the primordial and supreme energy that explains why Edy Brisseaux is a creator fighting for what unites the worlds. He cherishes the dream of seeing one day the aesthetic and cultural frontiers melt away so that the earthling can find again, as best he can, that original harmony to which the plural beauty of the world's music in its irreducible diversity seems to testify. Edy Brisseaux is in search of a world-music. The raklasikobop is the concrete testimony of it.

Born in Cap-Haitian, it is nevertheless in Port-au-Prince, where he went to live as a child, that he became a servant of the musical art. He was only six or seven years old and his father was his mentor. He quickly understood that his destiny was called "trumpet". With the solid theoretical and practical bases that he had acquired in the fanfare " La Sainte famille ", he brilliantly passed the audition of the Lycée Pétion where he quickly became " first trumpet ". Then came the notoriety. Little Edy, alias "Ti Piston", became one of the most sought-after trumpet players in the metropolitan area: funerals, foot bands, raras, sessions under the peristyles of hounfors... "Ti Piston" was present wherever Haitian popular culture instilled in women and men the art of taking life as it is in order to transfigure it into high creativity.

It is nevertheless during his collaboration with "Les Compagnons de St-Gérard" of the St-Gérard church that he discovers, amazed, jazz. His flexible mind is then available for the most audacious experiments and discoveries. The trumpet player admits that from that time onwards, what is now known as raklasikobop, the music that welcomes all the positive energies of the world, was budding in his head.

After a highly productive apprenticeship with the legendary Michel Desgrottes (1923-1993), Edy Brisseaux was barely out of his teens when he entered the demanding and challenging world of direct compas: "Compas Seven"; "Les Frères Déjean"; "Le Dixie Band"; "Les Superstars"... But also: "Caribbean Sextet" and "Zèklè. The trumpet player admits that his collaboration with these two groups -whose aesthetics make a considerable place for jazz- was an opportunity for him to deepen his musical knowledge, to explore less obvious, less comfortable, more complex and more sophisticated lands than those he had traveled until then.

For in his concern for intelligent eclecticism, Edy Brisseaux is above all and essentially a jazz trumpeter. His personal discography (six discs recorded between 1992 and 2003) attests to this in a convincing way. Of course. Nevertheless, the raklasikobop project has a special cachet. In a series of ambitious recordings, some more surprising than others, Edy Brisseaux goes on a pilgrimage. For if raklasikobop is, in its immediate definition, a cocktail whose main ingredients are Haitian rasin music, classical music, konpa and be bop, the pieces that Edy Brisseaux and Bazilik offer us allow us to see that the actualization of this mixed-race concept reveals an even more complex extension: It is a whirlpool where next to the personal creations of the trumpeter, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach ("Jesus that my joy remains") greets that of Charlie Parker ("Donna Lee") who reaches out to that of Chick Corea ("Spain") who applauds that of Djavan ("Oceano") who shouts "Ayibobo" for that of Wawa... Charles Aznavour ("Isabelle") and other important voices of the French song are interpreted on various rhythms; "Boplicity" of Miles Davis is made boldly singing and dancing; Mario Canonge is honored in a bold re-assimilation of his Creole jazz-mazurka ("Lese pale"); Syto Cavé's "La pèsonn" is elegantly swung; Skah-Shah's "Santiman" is also expertly swung, while other pieces by well-known compas groups are covered in salsa. And the farandole continues...

You will have understood: the repertoire of the Haitian trumpet player ensures a harmonious cohabitation between Haiti, the United States, Brazil, France, Cuba, Martinique, etc. Raklasikobop is the ultimate proof that Edy Brisseaux is in search of a world music.

Wilson Décembre, Ph.D.