André Déjean, trumpeter who helped shape modern Konpa, dies

André Déjean, the trumpeter, composer and arranger whose horn helped invent the sound of modern konpa, died Friday, Sept. 11, in Florida.

News of the death of the founding member of the legendary group “Les Frères Déjean”, traveled through Haiti and its diaspora within hours, prompting an outpouring of tributes from musicians, cultural institutions and, ultimately, the country’s highest office.

In a statement issued Saturday, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said the government had “learned with deep sadness of Déjean’s passing”

“By the richness of his brass melodies, the rigor of his art and his unwavering love for national culture,” the prime minister’s office said, “André Déjean leaves to posterity a body of work that now belongs to Haiti’s musical patrimony and the world’s.”

The government extended condolences to his family, his loved ones and “the entire Haitian artistic and cultural community, and that of the diaspora, mourning this loss.”

The End of an Era

Déjean’s death lands as another marker of time passing for the generation of musicians who built konpa in the 1960s and 1970s and carried it onto the world stage. It follows closely on the death of André “Dadou” Pasquet, the guitarist and co-founder of Magnum Band who was, like Déjean, one of the genre’s foundational architects.