Ti Coca, Toto Bissainthe

With her deep, theatrical voice set to traditional rara rhythms often played by just bass and percussion, Haiti-born Creole vocalist Toto Bissainthe introduced the music of her homeland to the international stage. The BBC praised her for taking "an experimental approach to her island's traditional drum and vocal music, creating an exhilarating and, sometimes startling, mix of relentless grooves and moving ballads." Leaving Haiti after the country was taken over by dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier in the early '60s, Bissainthe spent many years living in exile in Paris. Bissainthe appeared in the Raoul Peck-directed film L'Homme Sur Les Quais (The Man By the Shore) in 1993. ~ Craig Harris