Celebrating Zekle

Joel Widmaier remains one of Haiti’s most accomplished and sought after drummers. His work with bands like Caribbean Sextet, Strings, Zekle and with top notch artists like Gerald Merceron, Azor and his brother Mushy have set him in a class of his own. I caught up with the busy drummer some years back while he was booked on a local gig with Reginald Policard and enjoyed the following exchange:

SD: Who were the drummers that influenced you as a young man?

I was influenced by many drummers of my generation: Tico Pasquet of Magnum Band and the popular Jazz and Rock drummers of the 1970s. I studied and copied their styles like any beginner does before finding my own style.

SD: Who taught you how to play the instrument?

I learned the drums on my own. I never worked with a teacher or anything like that. It’s definitely a gift from God.

SD: Who influenced your singing style?

I was very influenced by my father’s and singers like Michel LeGrand, Al Jarreau, Nat King Cole, Gino Vanelli who is an Italian Canadian who’s not very well known. He was doing avant-garde Rock projects at the time. I was very influenced by his compositions and the power of his voice and I started to go after that style while was very young.

SD: Did you always play the drums while singing when you started out?

I picked up drumming at the age of 13 and singing when I was around 22 years old.

SD: You are a self taught musician who is among our top players, do you read music?

I don’t read music. I could not read music although I tried hard because I have dyslexia. So music for me is purely sound. I’m interacting with vibrations and sounds.

SD: What were your activities as a musician on the eve of the birth of Zekle?

I had a band with my brothers during the early 1980s and we played fusions of Rock, Jazz, Funk and other styles. That was around 1982 and my band mate Ralph Boncy was writing most of the songs for what would become Zekle. We were in the process of recording a demo at the time.

I was also working with my father at the radio station writing jingles. I also did a little songwriting of my own and began to share what I wrote with Ralph and he thought it was good and that was the beginning of Zekle from 1983 until about 1987. Our last album "San Mele" appeared in 1990. 

SD: Which is your favorite Zekle album?

I’ve always felt "San Mele" was our best album. It was our most ambitious album and musically speaking there were a lot of interesting things going on in our songs.

SD: Your original releases are hard to find in the U.S., we have access of "Best Of" releases, what were the titles of the original albums?

Our first album was "Sonje", and then there was "Ce ou min", then "Stop" and then "San Mele".

SD: Zekle was had some success in the French Antilles in the late 70s early 80s, what was the scene like at the time?

Well throughout the 1970s and early 1980s the Antilles absorbed the sounds of Haiti. There was Tabou Combo; there was Bossa Combo who did well in the French Antilles. The issue at the time was that the Radio Stations were not allowed to play music with Kreyol lyrics. There was a cultural revolution that took place among the young of that time that challenged the preference for strictly non-Kreyol music. It helped a lot. The movement towards native rhythms helped unleash Zouk.

Zouk exploded around this time and had the support of the French Government. Air France sponsored groups like Kassav and all that. Meanwhile, Haiti was about to face a severe moment in its economic history. Zouk had a stadium concert approach to presenting their music. Haitian bands were slow to adapt. Zekle was trying to follow that transition from the bal format to a concert format. Our younger followers saw and understood this but the larger public was not ready for that change, so it was hard to us to really take off.

So these were the circumstances under which we were traveling to places like Martinique and Guadeloupe and other places. We had success with songs like "Pil ou fas" and "Reponn Mwen". We were popular among musicians and fans of serious music. We played in France with bands like Malavoi who were big at that time.

SD: Fans of the band are always hoping for a reunion of the group, is that likely?

My next project for Zekle and this is just me talking right now, is to reunite the original musicians and do a live concert in Haiti and, if that works, to do a small tour with the band outside of Haiti. I’d also love to invite musicians of the current generation to be a part of this!

I’ve been dreaming of doing this for years but Mushi’s not ready yet. We recently finished his solo album, "My World" and we’re pushing that at the moment.

It’s a great album with a lot of fine work in the arrangements. 

SD: You played a very interesting drum set as a member of Strings with a heavy emphasis on percussion where did you find that?

The set up was one that I created for Strings. It wasn’t a drum set. I had a kick, High hat, a Djembe, Conga, Banbou, Chimes and various other hand percussion. Everything was played with hands.

I did not know how to play congas or hand instruments for that matter but I learned again on my own and as I developed the kit as I played with the band. I don’t think of myself as a percussionist but I can accompany someone. I’m not really a technician on the instrument. At the time it was just daring on my part.

SD: Everyone loved seeing you with Strings, what led to your departure?

I really liked the Strings experience. I wrote a lot of arrangements for Strings and also wrote songs with them.

I left because of changes in my personal life and because the band began to go further towards the Konpa Direk market. I felt that a part of what was original about our sound was changing and that change would not bring us closer to an international market which was what I thought we were pursuing. That would have been hard enough to do because we were a mainly instrumental band at a time when there was already a big trend of instrumental bands releasing albums for the world music market.

The Strings sound was fashioned more after the Gypsy Kings sort of tropical Flamenco. We had experiences where if we played after a band like T-Vice, the audience didn’t find what it was looking for. We were perhaps closer to a Haiti Twoubadou movement. But the new changes were a little discouraging to me so we parted ways.

I don’t have anything against Konpa of course but the one thing I don’t like about the Konpa bal format is that I’m behind a drum set from 9pm to 4am and the lights are off while people are there for another purpose. They’re not there to share an experience with the band, so may as well play a CD and dance.

At the time of this interview talk of a reunion tour was just that and it is great to see that Joel lived up to his promised and delivered Zekle to all of its fans in Haiti and abroad in recent months.