Haiti’s Vodou religion has found many musical champions – notably the groups Boukman Eksperyans and Lakou Mizik – but on Pèlerinaj, Erol Josué offers full immersion into Vodou’s mysteries. Following in the footsteps of his Port-au-Prince parents, Josué was initiated as a Vodou priest at the age of 17, subsequently spending several years in Paris and New York before returning to his homeland after the island’s devastating 2010 earthquake, and becoming director of the National Bureau of Ethnology.
Pèlerinaj (Pilgrimage) comes 16 years after his debut, Régléman, and is a more diverse affair, recorded in New York, Paris, Miami and Haiti and drawing on an eclectic array of musicians, including Scots guitarist Mark Mulholland and the Gotan Project’s Philippe Cohen Solal, as well as intricate percussion and Haitian choirs. At its centre is the tenor voice of Josué, stately and striking, bringing a mix of chants, invocations to the lwa (spirits) and homages to Haiti itself. The island’s history is a troubled one, from the horrors of the Duvalier regime to the current ravages of murderous gangs, and Josué asks how a nation that liberated itself from slavery now finds its people “beggars”. A moving call for peace, reconstruction and spiritual rebirth.
