Toto Bissainthe

Biography

With her deep, theatrical voice set to traditional rara rhythms often performed by simply bass and percussion, Haiti-born Creole vocalist Toto Bissainthe introduced the music of her homeland towards the international stage. The BBC praised her when planning on taking “an experimental method of her island’s traditional drum and vocal music, creating an exciting and, occasionally startling, mixture of relentless grooves and shifting ballads.” Departing Haiti following the nation was bought out by dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the first ’60s, Bissainthe spent a long time surviving in exile in Paris. Bissainthe made an appearance within the Raoul Peck-directed film L’Homme Sur Les Quais (THE PERSON By the Shoreline) in 1993.

Quick Facts