In 2022, the bassist, singer, composer, and poet Sélène Saint-Aimé embarked on “Éritaj,” an exploration of present and historical African, Afro-Indian, and Caribbean influences on New Orleans’ musical culture. Sélène’s project flowered through the formation of a local band, with trumpeter Steve Lands, tenor saxophonist Gladney, sousaphone trombonist Miles Lyons, pianist Shea Pierre, and drummer Alfred Jordan, Jr., mixing creole songs and culture with Saint-Aimé’s own music and poetry. This event, featuring Sélène’s compositions and early creole songs from New Orleans and Martinique, marks the band’s debut performance in New York....
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In 2022, the bassist, singer, composer, and poet Sélène Saint-Aimé embarked on “Éritaj,” an exploration of present and historical African, Afro-Indian, and Caribbean influences on New Orleans’ musical culture. Sélène’s project flowered through the formation of a local band, with trumpeter Steve Lands, tenor saxophonist Gladney, sousaphone trombonist Miles Lyons, pianist Shea Pierre, and drummer Alfred Jordan, Jr., mixing creole songs and culture with Saint-Aimé’s own music and poetry. This event, featuring Sélène’s compositions and early creole songs from New Orleans and Martinique, marks the band’s debut performance in New York.
Sélène Saint-Aimé is a French contrabassist, singer, composer and poet with Caribbean and West African origins. She studied with internationally acclaimed bassists Ron Carter and Lonnie Plaxico as well as the saxophonist and conceptualist Steve Coleman. Sélène recently received a “Victoire du Jazz 2021” award in the “Rising star” category for her acclaimed first record, Mare Undarum. Sélène was a composer in residence at Tropiques Atrium in Martinique from 2021 until 2024, a 2022 Villa Albertine laureate in New Orleans, and a 2023 Villa Ndar laureate in Saint Louis, Senegal.
Maestro Renald Saint-Juste grew up in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood Bel-Air, which is known for its Vodou and folkloric drumming. He began playing the drums at the age of nine; in his teens, he toured with the preeminent Haitian Vodou musical group Wawa Racine Kanga throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America. In New York, Maestro Renald drums for Vodou temples and with groups including La Troupe Makandal and Plezi Rara.
About Transatlantik:
This November, FourOneOne presents Transatlantik, two days of performances and conversation with diasporic artists engaged with the artistic and political concepts of negritude and créolité: Aruán Ortiz's Reimagining Tropiques: Then and Now ft. Anaïs Maviel and Aliya Ultan; Sélène Saint Aimé's Creole Songs; KāFOU (Val Jeanty and Cassie Watson Francillon); Renald St. Juste; and Patrick Chamoiseau, the Martinican author and theorist of créolité; plus an afterparty with Alexis Marcelo, DJ Buddy and DJ Jeff Brown. Transatlantik kicks off FourOneOne’s series of performances, discussions, and other public convenings exploring creolization, the fraught process of social, cultural, and linguistic mixing through the enforced cohabitation of racialized and subjugated peoples within the extractive contexts of slavery, colonialism and plantation societies.
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