Compas / Kompa

Kompa moves at 80 to 100 BPM in an even four, with rhythm guitar laying down a clipped, often-muted scratch on the offbeats. The full lineup typically pairs that guitar with electric bass, drums, congas, keyboards, and a horn section, all sitting tight in the pocket rather than soloing on top. Vocals are smooth and slightly nasal, usually in Haitian Creole, and lyrics center on romance and dancefloor flirtation. From the 1980s the genre took on more synths and drum machines, but the underlying groove was preserved.

Nemours Jean-Baptiste codified 'compas direct' in 1955, reframing Dominican merengue with a slower swing and a clearer downbeat aimed at Haitian dancers. His rivalry with Webert Sicot's 'cadence rampa' shaped the scene through the 1960s. Tabou Combo, formed in 1968 and based partly in New York, internationalized kompa with hits like 'New York City' (1975). Today Haitian Creole-language kompa is a staple in francophone West and Central Africa as well as the Haitian diaspora in Montreal, Miami, and Paris.

Track the rhythm guitar carefully - its strokes land on subdivisions rather than the strong 2 and 4, and that off-placement is what makes kompa swing differently from other Caribbean four-on-the-floor styles. Bass lines are deliberately spare so dancers can read them, so listen for how horn arrangements answer the vocal rather than competing with it.

Tabou Combo's 'New York City' (1975) is the canonical introduction. For an album, 'Tabou Combo Live' or Nemours Jean-Baptiste's 'Musical Tour of Haiti' walks back to the form's first decade.

Kompa's spread into francophone Africa was so deep that several Congolese and Gabonese bands in the 1980s recorded full kompa LPs in Creole they did not speak, learning the lyrics phonetically from Tabou Combo records.