Wesli Performing Live

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Hours:	7:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Ages:	Kids, Teens, Adults
In/Outdoor:	Indoor
Cost:	$ see below
Category:	Music & Concerts

To prepare for his ambitious new musical project, Tradisyon, the uniquely talented Haitian-Canadian songwriter, guitarist and producer Wesli (Wesley Louissaint) had to return to his roots.

He embarked on a multi-year musical pilgrimage to explore often hidden facets of Haitian traditions.

Wesli traveled across his homeland, visiting lakous, gathering places and community groups for practitioners of Haiti’s voodoo religion, to learn songs in African languages brought to Haiti hundreds of years ago.

He honed his skills at a wide range of local musical instruments, from powerful interlocking rara horns to intricate drums in all shapes and sizes, not to mention folk instruments such as the Haitian banjo.

And he reconnected with the profound spirituality and rich life philosophy of Afro-Haitian beliefs, which represent the inspiration and motivation, indeed the very soul, of Haitian culture.

The result of this ambitious research is Tradisyon, the sixth album of Wesli’s celebrated career, and the first of a two-part set that retells the story of Haiti’s past and imagines its future.

The encyclopedic first album features 19 songs, original compositions and treasures from the expansive Haitian music repertoire.

By drawing on these traditions, Africa inevitably emerges -- through the rara, petro, nago, congo and yanvalou rhythms, and the lyrics sung both in Creole and the African languages of Yoruba, Ewe and Fon.

They are all accompanied by local instruments such as the bamboo, the kata, the segon, the boula, the manman and the banjo, an originally African instrument that had been adopted by European colonizers

COST

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$25

WEBSITE

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artsatthearmory.org/events/wesli/

LOCATION

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191 Highland Ave #1c, Somerville, MA, 02143 map