There’s afrofuturism, and here we’re in afro-realism. It’s hard to make a more realistic song! Author, composer, guitarist, singer, Jean Jean Roosevelt is a Haitian troubadour model 2025.
Through his rhymes, he exposes his values, his aspirations, his vision of living together, his feelings of exile, his free will over his destiny, his suffering from an absent mother, his planetary humanism and even his hilarious perception of the Quebec winter he has had to endure since his migration to Montreal – a relatively recent one, it seems.
Thus, Jean Jean Roosevelt’s texts are very close to direct thought set in rhyme, to opinion, to civic thought, to a moral stance… perhaps less so to poetry.
Musically, however, the man is an artist. He’s a very good singer, a good backing guitarist, and he knows how to surround himself with very solid musicians: sax, keyboards, drums, bass, quality backing vocals, and I’ll always remember the exceptional playing of Ronald Nazaire, an authentic Haitian master drummer.
It’s clear that Jean Jean Roosevelt first and foremost mobilizes his audience in the Afro-Caribbean community, without any fever or buzz, at least for the time being. He knows how to blend troubadour, rasin, konpa-soul, reggae-soul and power ballad styles – in short, the dominant trends in the Caribbean – with a songwriting approach.
One imagines that there is a vast market for Jean Jean Roosevelt and his good feelings. We hope this market will find him, which is not yet entirely clear in Montreal, at least not this week at Nuits d’Afrique – the Fairmount Theatre was far from full. A question of timing…
