Keith’s whole Video from the Launch-Party is now up on the YouTube Channel for Lèkol Toupatou in Haiti. You can watch it here. It include invaluable passages of Rivers Answer Moons band-members HERMAN LEBEAUX, KIRK JOSEPH, ROGER LEWIS, and DON VAPPIE revealing with superb images and insights how music for the 2-CD Album arose and developed. Keith did us a huge SOLID with this video.
KIRK JOSEPH, DON VAPPIE, SEAN VAPPIE (Don’s son), and HERMAN LEBEAUX. Kirk, Don V. and Herman are superlative musicians in the Rivers Answer Moons band. Photo by KEITH HILL at the LOUISIANA STORIES Album-Release Party, December 6, 2024 in New Orleans’ Angela King Gallery.
Lèkol Toupatou means ‘School Everywhere’ in Haitian Kréyol. Lèkol Toupatou represents the life’s dream of Madame MARIE MARTHE BALIN FRANCK PAUL. Madame Franck Paul, now 88, has taught in Schools of Haiti since she was age 17. She founded College Canapé Vert in Port-au-Prince 50 years ago. A recent Substack of mine profiled Madame Franck Paul, known to her family as “Amine.” She’s my wife MARYSE PHILIPPE DEJEAN’S aunt.
Much more about Lèkol Toupatou can be read and heard over on the Sticking Up For Children website.
Today, too, Album LOUISIANA STORIES becomes available through its exclusive Retail Outlet, our friends’ Louisiana Music Factory.
We’re VERY happy to be partnering with LMF and we hope sell MILLIONS of copies through their physical (421 Frenchmen Street in New Orleans) and online Stores … because 50% of Sales of LOUISIANA STORIES will go to our educational Partners in Haiti and New Orleans.
This Substack had posted since, oh, last April about the Band’s progress with this Album. One CD is 12 Tracks with vocals, coming to 76 minutes. Its companion is 10 Tracks of Instrumentals. It’s ‘like a music library,’ Don Vappie has written.
We hope and believe you’ll find the Whole of this Thing, its Pair of Long Listens, deeply pleasurable.
Thank YOU!
Share this post