By KIRSTEN BOLTON
For ArtSpring
In what is promising to be one of ArtSpring’s most colourful, exuberant and multi-cultural concerts of the season, award-winning artist Wesli and his six-person band will be bringing the beats and the jam to the island next Thursday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Born into a poor family of seven children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wesli (Wesley Louissaint) built his first guitar at the age of eight by stringing an old oil can with nylon fishing line. He sang alongside his mother in the gospel choir of the local church, and his father was a well-known banjo and percussion player of twoubadou, a popular Haitian folk music style.
After experiencing the joyful, passionate music played around him as a child, both by his parents and his broader community, he dreamed of becoming a professional musician, saying “music chose me to share its spirit.”
His own spirit was challenged at a young age, when his family fled to a Cuban refugee camp during the violence that erupted after the 1991 Haitian coup d’état. Just 11 years old at the time, this difficult experience taught him “resilience, reconciliation and forgiveness” in the face of conflict.
“No matter what,” Wesli says, “you can rebuild yourself, give yourself a positive direction, and make yourself into a new person that is useful to the society that you are living in.”
From these humble beginnings, at 21 he won a Canadian scholarship which allowed him to study arrangement and percussion in Montréal, where he continues to reside, going on to become one of Haiti’s most inspiring and celebrated musical ambassadors.
Wesli explores a variety of genres while keeping his musical identity anchored in evangelical gospel, reggae, Afrobeat, funk and Haitian roots music, while also exploring electronic, soul and hip-hop. He has accompanied the greatest Caribbean artists and several big names in African music during their stays in Montréal.
His ancestors can be traced to the Congo and, like many Black people from West Africa, were victims of France’s slave trade. His songs combine 60 per cent French words with a Creole patois that combines French, Spanish and African words of the Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Nago and other traditional music that is sung but never spoken in order to retain the purity of the language.
“This isn’t about politics,” he says. “We sing about joy, culture, tribal songs and the value of the diversity of African heritage.”
Earning acclaim across the globe for his appealing music, energizing live performances and charming personality, in 2019, he won the Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year and in 2024 was the winner of World Music International Male Solo Artist of the year at the prestigious Haitian Music Awards in Miami. He’s also won at the American Independent Music Awards and Canadian Folk Music Awards.
With saxophone, banjo, guitar, keyboards, trumpet, bass, drums, other percussions and cultural instruments many will not have heard or seen before — this lively Wesli concert will no doubt be one to remember.
Tickets are available through ArtSpring, at the box office and online.