Haiti Place Banned Haiti artist Don Kato weighs carnival invite

News Information

  • NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
  • NEWS_POSTED_ON: Feb 07, 2015
  • Views : 671
  • Category : Haiti News
  • Description :

    BY JACQUELINE CHARLES, JCHARLES@MIAMIHERALD.COM
    02/05/2015 8:13 PM 02/05/2015 9:12 PM

    Carnival Queen Fabienne Francois dances at Carnival celebrations in Jacmel, Haiti, Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014. The Carnival spirit will take hold again this weekend in Jacmel as its annual parade snakes through the downtown of the coastal town in a warm up to Haiti’s National Carnival Feb. 15, 16 and 17, which returns to Port-au-Prince this year. DIEU NALIO CHERY / AP
  • Location : Port-au-Prince, Ouest, Haiti
  • Website : http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article9371408.html

Overview

  • PORT-AU-PRINCE - Don Kato, the lead singer of Brothers Posse, a popular Haitian group banned from the country’s last two national carnivals because of his lyrics bashing President Michel Martelly says he’s not sure if he will participate in the upcoming celebration despite an invitation from the country’s newly installed prime minister.

    “It will be difficult for me as prime minister not to let Don Kato go out,” Prime Minister Evans Paul told the Miami Herald in an interview before his office made an official announcement via Twitter and in the Haitian media.

    The no-strings attached invitation, as Paul tweeted, was one of his first acts as prime minister since being sworn-in last month.

    Gregory Saba, the head of the National Carnival committee, which is organizing the three-day pre-Lenten celebration that finally returns to Port-au-Prince on Feb. 15, 16 and 17, confirmed that Kato “has officially been put on” as one of the 16 bands invited to perform their beat-throbbing Carnival méringues on floats moving through the crowd on the Champ de Mars in front of the grounds of the razed presidential palace.

    “The PM told him and yesterday the committee invited him to a meeting and spoke to his manager,” Saba said Thursday.

    Kato said he learned about the invitation in the media “like everyone else.”

    “Up until now, I personally haven’t received any phone calls from the one who invited me, the prime minister,” he said. “It’s a political decision. The one who asked that we be put on the line-up, the prime minister, should sit down with us since we have been banned for the last several years.”

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