Josephine Premice

Josephine Premice, whose music was never to my taste, sings "Choucoune" quite uniquely here. I assume the musicians accompanying her were trying to turn it more into a calypso, but it works well. However, what artists like Josephine Premice reveal is the deeper history of Haitians in New York City. Her father, Lucas, must have been part of the small wave of Haitians who came to NYC in the 1920s and 1930s, like Henri Rosemond (or, perhaps, Ray, of Claude McKay's Home to Harlem). Like Rosemond, he was also involved with labor organizers, the Left, and Haitian resistance to the US Occupation (via Union Patriotique). Her father's home in Brooklyn was a center for Haitians in the city, and he even knew Jacques Roumain. Like Premice, Andrew Cyrille was also born in New York to Haitian parents before the vast waves of immigrants from the island came. Putting together the story of the Haitians in NYC before the 1960s would be an interesting project. 

Choucoune

The legendary poem by our national bard, Oswald Durand.