Renowned jazz drummer Obed Calvaire named his new album 150 Million Gold Francs, he explains, “to engage curiosity. People definitely know Haiti has been struggling — but how many people actually know the history behind how that struggle started?
“So if you see that title,” he continues, “what does that mean?”
Photo Courtesy J. Ortiz
The answer to that question has intrigued, and haunted, Calvaire for many years. Born of Haitian parentage in Miami, he became interested in the tragic deal that shaped his ancestry as a college student: how, after Black slaves fought for and won their independence in the Haitian Revolution, their free nation was extorted by the defeated French colonizers, who used warships to demand an impossible sum of 150 million gold francs in reparations.
The album’s striking cover art, by Jasmin Ortiz, depicts Calvaire bare-chested with his eyes closed, his outstretched hands shackled in front of that stolen bounty. “It symbolizes how we have nothing else to give,” Calvaire says, “how we are still locked into this slave mentality.”
In essence, the Haitian people, who’d achieved a glorious and unprecedented act of liberation, were made to suffer for it — shunned in global trade for their bravery, and forced to handle a debt whose aftereffects continue to shape the country’s immeasurable hardships. “We’re still paying for the fact that we were the first Black republic to gain our independence,” Calvaire says.
But 150 Million Gold Francs is by no means an album-length lament. Rather, it’s a spirited celebration of the profound richness of the land and the culture — an elegy for Haiti’s dire past as well as a hopeful vision for the country’s future, and an homage to its unstoppably optimistic people.
It is also a deeply personal project undertaken by one of the finest drummers of his generation, whose current credits include Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Dave Holland, Sean Jones and other luminaries. Joining Calvaire on his journey is a unique assemblage of mostly Haitian and Haitian-American musicians — alto saxophonist Godwin Louis, keyboardists Harold St. Louis and Sullivan Fortner, guitarist Dener Ceide, and bassists Addi Lafosse and Jonathan Michel.