Wesli

Wesli is the stage name of Wesley Louissaint, a Haitian Canadian singer-songwriter, guitarist and record producer who unites Haitian voodoo and rara styles with roots, Afrobeat and hip-hop. Born in 1980 to a financially-challenged family of seven children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wesli built his first guitar at age eight by stringing an old oil can with nylon fishing line. His father, Henri Louissaint, was a well-known banjo and percussion player of twoubadou, a popular Haitian folk music style. His family fled to a Cuban refugee camp during the violence that erupted after the 1991 Haitian coup d'état. Moving to Montreal, Quebec in 2001 to study music, Wesli created his own record label WUP (Wes Urban Productions) in 2006 as an independent artist. He collaborated on albums by Senaya and Sara Rénélik before releasing his debut album Kouraj in 2009, followed by Liberté dans le noir (2011), ImmiGrand and Ayiti Étoile Nouvelle (2015), and Rapadou Kreyol (2018). Wesli won the Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2019 for Rapadou Kreyol. He also won the Coup de Coeur Académie Charles-Cros Prize (France, 2020), Best World Music song from the American Independent Music Awards, and Best World Music Artist at the Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2020.

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