Haiti: Port-au-Prince returns to its jazz festival despite insecurity

The Port-au-Prince jazz festival returned this week to the Haitian capital and attracted hundreds of spectators each evening despite the security crisis shaking this city where gang violence is a daily occurrence.

PaPJazz, which ended on Sunday January 28, was postponed to 2022 then relocated in 2023 to Cap-Haitien (North) because of chronic insecurity in the capital, around 80% of which is under the control of criminal groups according to the UN . “It’s the festival of resistance to everything that is happening, our way of saying that we believe in it and that we want to move forward,” Milena Sandler, one of the organizers of this 17th edition.

“The city is not dead despite everything,” she added. “The Port-au-Princiens needed to find themselves in conviviality as Haitians. This event gives them the illusion that they can dream, live together...". To accommodate the security crisis, the festival was concentrated in four days and no longer eight and the free concerts organized in public squares and in universities were canceled.

The stages were set up in a safe residential area, on the wooded esplanade of the Karibe hotel, where the artists were staying and which houses United Nations offices in Haiti. Volunteers and national police officers provided security in this pocket protected from the violence that is consuming the surrounding poor neighborhoods.

“Despite the challenges, the festival demonstrates impressive resilience. It’s a celebration of Haitian cultural wealth,” Esmeralda Milcé, a spectator who works in marketing, told AFP. This festival regular was particularly delighted with the performance of Haitian Beethova Obas: “I hadn't had the pleasure of seeing him for over a decade.”

Sometimes seated, sometimes standing, the audience - made up of expatriates but also spectators from the Haitian middle class - was able to dance and sing and groups of “Rara”, Haitian carnival music, animated the interludes. “People are in a festive spirit,” said Samantha Rabel, a young doctor.

The 17th edition welcomed foreign artists such as the American of Cameroonian origin Richard Bona and the Frenchman Ludovic Louis, as well as Haitian artists working in Haiti or from the diaspora. According to the Haiti Jazz Foundation, organizer, the festival welcomed between 550 and 850 people each evening from Thursday to Saturday. Others flocked to see emerging musicians during the free after-parties organized in three restaurants in Pétion-Ville, which attracted crowds according to an AFP correspondent.