Joseph Emmanuel "Manno" Charlemagne (April 14, 1948 – December 10, 2017)
was a
Haitian political
folk singer
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
, songwriter and acoustic guitarist, political activist and
politician
A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...
. He recorded his political
chanson
A (, , french: chanson française, link=no, ; ) is generally any lyric-driven French song, though it most often refers to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval and Renaissance music. The genre had origins in the monophonic so ...
s in both French and in Creole. He lived abroad in exile twice, both during the 1980s and again during the years 1991–1994, when the country was ruled by a military ''
junta
Junta may refer to:
Government and military
* Junta (governing body) (from Spanish), the name of various historical and current governments and governing institutions, including civil ones
** Military junta, one form of junta, government led by ...
'' led by
Raoul Cédras
Joseph Raoul Cédras (born July 9, 1949) is a Haitian former military officer who was the ''de facto'' ruler of Haiti from 1991 to 1994.
Background
A mulatto, Cédras was educated in the United States and was a member of the U.S.-trained ''Le ...
.
Early life
Charlemagne grew up in
Carrefour
Carrefour () is a French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation headquartered in Massy, France. The eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue, it operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries stores and convenience stores, whic ...
, to the south of the capital of
Port-au-Prince, where he was influenced as much by the songs of the peasants who moved into the area in search of a livelihood, as by his Catholic school choir. Raised by his aunt, he did not know who his father was until he was 37 years old.
Political career
In 1986, after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, Charlemagne organized a youth group and choir in his old neighborhood, Carrefour. For a brief time following
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's landslide victory on 16 December 1990, Charlemagne found himself in the role of a government booster. He served as an unofficial minister in the Aristide cabinet, an assignment that ended abruptly nine months later, when a military junta overthrew Haiti's first freely elected president.
On 11 October, a truckload of troops pulled up to his home, roughed him up in front of his family, and hauled him off to jail. His wife, Chantel, went into hiding with the couple's baby son, Ti-Manno, and later fled to the island of
Guadeloupe.
Charlemagne was elected mayor of
Port-au-Prince in June 1995. He will remain in office until 1999.
Music
Charlemagne took up guitar and singing at the age of 16. By 1968, he had formed a band named ''Les Remarquables.'' He later started a twoubadou band named ''Les Trouvères'' with Marco Jeanty.
Death
Charlemagne died in
Miami Beach, Florida on December 10, 2017, aged 69, after a struggle of several months with lung cancer which had metastasized to his brain.
Discography
1978, ''Manno et Marco'', Marc Records
1984, "Konviksyon"
1988, "Organizasyon mondyal"
1988, "Fini les colonies"
1993, "La Fimen"
References
Sources
*
*
External links
*
*NPR Audio Report
Manno Charlemagne: The Bob Marley Of Haiti accessed December 11, 2017.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charlemagne, Manno
1948 births
2017 deaths
20th-century Haitian male singers
Fanmi Lavalas politicians
Mayors of Port-au-Prince
Acoustic guitarists
Political music artists
Deaths from cancer in Florida