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Summer is upon us, and this year it means that there will be no shortage of Haitian music festivals throughout the Haitian Diaspora. The fourth of July weekend brought HaitiXchange to Orlando, Florida for the second annual Independence Day Kompa Music Festival. Held in a field in the shadows of Orlando’s Citrus Bowl football stadium, the attendance was visibly higher than last year. A combination of 11 Haitian bands were advertised for this second edition of the festival, ranging from Djakout, T-Vice, Kreyol La, Carimi to Tempo, Harmonik, and Hangout. Many people traveled from different parts of the States, Haiti, and Canada to take part in the festivities.

Following a trend started last year and adopted by other Haitian music festivals, Kreyol Hip-Hop acts also made appearances. Barikad Crew, whom we had just seen at Brooklyn’s Kreyolfest the week before, and Black Dada who has been taking South and Central Florida by storm with his hit single, and BET contest winning song, “Imma Zoe” rocked the younger, Hip-Hop-loving members of the crowd.

As the festival switched gears from park to drive, the skies were clear. Mother nature, a bit indecisive early on, threw a little rain here and there in between acts. Rain or shine, the crowd remained unmovable during the performance of New York-based group Tempo. In fact thereafter, the weather changed to the festival’s advantage. An extremely hot Florida sun kept most people away during the early hours of the show, but as the sun went down, people showed up in droves to enjoy the music. Between performances, comedy acts as well as other local personalities would take the stage, and people also enjoyed the beats of a Rara band that would walk around the festival grounds followed by a mostly young crowd of gyrating men and women.

As the show progressed, the late Michael Jackson received special tributes.  MacD, lead singer of Harmonik, who wore a black hat, a black glove, and a white t-shirt that had a few imprinted images of MJ. Harmonik performed a medley of “Beat it”, “Billie Jean”, etc, before playing some of their well-known Compas hits. In addition, Jude, the keyboardist of the group Zenglen, also did a special Michael Jackson tribute. He wore a white replica of MJ’s sequined jacket and white glitter glove, while doing an impersonation of Michael Jackson doing the moon walk.

On a negative note, with such a long lineup, most of the established bands, who played later on in the day, had their set cut ridiculously short with members of Barikad Crew and CaRiMi becoming visibly irate when their microphones were cut off.  Bands like Djakout and Zenglen did what they could with their alloted time. Many of them only performed about 5-10 minutes of their set due to the time constraints. T-Vice ended the evening at midnight, barely getting into their 2002 carnival hit “Men Elikoptè” [Here’s the Helicopter"] before the cops forced the show to shut down. For those of you who know the lyrics, T-Vice only got one round of the “kata kata kata” (helicopter sound) part of the song out before time ran out. The audience left the field loudly, and collectively voicing their disappointment. Overall, the event was entertaining and went well, even though the ending might have left a slightly bitter taste in the mouths of some performers and music lovers. However, it is safe to say that the festival organizers have something good in their hands.

Barbara Saint-Cyr (Kreyol_Barbie) and Pascal Antoine (CoolP)