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Hip-Hop around the World: Haitian youth try to escape the slums with help from Wyclef Jean.

MUSIC -- Hip-Hop Around the World: Haiti

Haitian youth try to escape the slums, with a little help from Wyclef Jean

Published Saturday, December 16, 2006

Clutching a microphone and swaying to a throbbing hip-hop beat, Elyse Senora walked onstage and belted out a slew of Creole-language rhymes that ignited the crowd packed elbow-to-elbow in the dark television studio.

It was a big moment for the young aspiring rapper, who goes by the stage name Blaze1. A few years ago, he was sitting in a juvenile prison in Haiti, his future bleak. But on a steamy night in June, he took the stage in a nationally televised hip-hop contest for poor youths, seemingly reborn.

"It felt good because they were clapping for me," the 22-year-old said afterward.

Surviving Haiti's worst slums has often meant picking up a gun and joining a gang. Now some youths are picking up microphones and joining bands instead.

It's only natural. While it's soccer in Brazil or baseball in the Dominican Republic, music has long been the stuff of dreams for poor kids in Haiti, where pulsing "compa" beats blare in shantytowns and street musicians play drums and horns made from trash.

"I've seen people shot, burned with tires, chopped with machetes. It affects me," said Senora, his lanky, 6-foot frame clad in a camouflage shirt, matching cap and dark sunglasses. "I think music can take us out of this life."

The dream of going from the slums to hip-hop stardom is due largely to the success of one man, Haitian-born rap star Wyclef Jean, who rose from poverty and won world acclaim through his Grammy-winning band, The Fugees.

Jean sponsored the hip-hop competition through Yele-Haiti, a charity he formed that uses music to boost development in the troubled and impoverished Caribbean nation.

The youths performed their first major concert this past September in a parade to promote national progress.

Jean said he backed the rap contest so poor kids "would have a sense of hope and the courage to believe in themselves."

"Expression through music is therapy and creating music gives kids self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment," Jean said during a break from his U.S. tour with Colombian singer Shakira. "Haiti has the richest culture in the Caribbean with so much talent waiting to be let out."

To find that talent, Yele-Haiti held auditions in three slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince, ignoring frequent clashes between street gangs and U.N. peacekeepers who were deployed after a bloody revolt toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004.

The organization picked a dozen rappers and asked them to write songs that promote cleaning up the gritty capital. Three winners got to record their songs for a CD -- but the real prize is a potential ticket out of the hardship most contestants have known since birth.

"There's no jobs, no factories, no nothing," said Daglia Kenzie, a 21-year-old rapper from the rough Bel-Air slum who won the overall contest.

Another contestant, Izidor Brunel, lives with his parents and five siblings in a squat concrete home in the seaside slum of Cite Soleil. Most days he wakes up with only 10 Haitian gourdes (25 cents) in his pocket, barely enough to buy food.

"It's a hard life. But I'm not going to rob and kidnap people to survive," said Brunel.

The performers draw on their harsh life experiences in their music, which ranges from hard-bitten raps about violence to love songs. Many say they want to pursue a music career in the United States and all idolize Jean, who left Haiti with his family at age 9.

"Wyclef's not only a singer. He's a survivor, someone who fought to achieve his goals. That's a huge dream for me," said Kenzie, who calls himself "Mad S."

So are they any good?

Yele-Haiti organizers say they have potential, but admit that achieving even an inkling of Jean's success will be a long-shot.

"I always tell them, 'Fame is nice, but you don't need fame to be somebody'," said Magalee Racine, a Yele-Haiti coordinator and designated den mother to the performers. "These kids could be engineers, mechanics. They just need role models and guidance to keep them from the bad things."

For Senora, the bad things put him in a prison for young offenders several years ago. He declined to discuss his ordeal or say what he did, but insisted he's now on a good path.

"I want to have a life in music," he said. "When you see Wyclef, I want you to see me right up there with him."