Tabou Combo

The Chancy brothers—Albert on bass and Adolphe on guitar—established the group in Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port-Au-Prince. As a youthful ensemble, the band claimed victory in Radio Haiti’s 1968 mini-jazz competition. In 1971 the musicians relocated to Brooklyn. Their song “New York City,” which addressed the hardships of exile, ascended to number one on the Paris pop charts in August 1975. During the 1970s and 1980s they contended with Ska-Shah for top-band distinction, staging “musical duels” akin to the Weber Sicot/Jean-Baptiste Nemours clashes of the 1950s and 1960s.

An electrifying live act, Tabou Combo carries Haitian compas before expansive crowds. The itinerary has encompassed regular engagements at Paris’s celebrated Zenith Theatre throughout the 1980s, a 20,000-strong gathering in New York’s Central Park, the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, performances in Caribbean football stadiums, and regular play by leading DJs—all prompting audiences to dance. Funk and soul influences from their adopted city shaped the band’s sound; late-1970s album covers showed Tabou adopting the visual style of the Commodores. A demo tape was even cut in pursuit of a Motown contract. The goal of reaching the Black U.S. market has remained elusive, yet the musicians can take satisfaction that Kassav’ from the Antilles/Paris and Wilfrido Vargas from the Dominican Republic have drawn upon their work.