Part of Multiflora Productions annual Flash of the Spirit music festival series. Founded in 1978, Boukman Eksperyans is one of Haiti’s most beloved bands. After the group’s charismatic leader, Theodore “Lòlò” Beaubrun saw Bob Marley perform, he was inspired by Marley’s example to similarly uplift and amplify Haiti’s traditional music and its spiritual message. In the decades since, Lòlò and his wife Mimerose, better known as Manzè, pioneered a vibrant cultural movement, now known as mizik rasin. First called vodou adjae, mizik rasin means “roots music” in Haitian Creole (Kreyol), a synthesis of French with numerous West African languages. Mizik rasin fuses the sacred music of the Afro-Haitian religion Vodou with electrified elements of rock and R&B. The band’s moniker reflects this powerful cultural amalgam: it combines the name of Boukman Dutty, a Vodou priest who led the famous 1791 ceremony at Bois Caïman that is credited with sparking the Haitian revolution, with eksperyans, an invocation, in Kreyol, of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. “Eksperyans” also reflects the Beaubrun’s embrace of the Vodou philosophy that “all has to be one in love.”

Crank LuKongo is an Afro Go-Go Roots Music collective, akin to a DC Go-Go rhythmic foundation infused with elements of Progressive Soul, Jazz, Reggae, Blues, Rock, Salsa, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Beat, World Beat, Folk, and Hip-Hop.

Friday September 6 Boukman Eksperyans * Haitian mizik rasin with Crank LuKongo at Tropicalia

7:30PM $20

Get tickets HERE