She set fire to the Rio Loco scene in June 2018 and is set to re-perform at the Nougaro Hall on Tuesday, February 15: blues singer Mélissa Laveaux has an out-of-the-ordinary temperament.
Born in Montreal in 1985 to Haitian immigrant parents, officially French since 2019, Mélissa was thirteen when her father gave her an acoustic guitar – which she has since swapped for an electric guitar which she plays remarkably well. Keen on folk and Creole music, she devours and learns the repertoire of Martha Jean-Claude, Brassens, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone and Cesária Evora. Her style is nourished by all these big names and her extraordinary personality: Mélissa likes to tell stories, her fist clenched, with her warm and deep voice.
tender lullabies
Fascinated by writing and beautiful melodies, she decided on her sublimely titled fourth album, “Mama Forgot Her Name Was Miracle” to tenderly revisit lullabies. “I wanted to write songs that rock the soul, for those who feel like dancing at three in the morning or those who feel like crying at ten o’clock,” she said recently. Free and committed, she has decided to honor in this new opus important but little-known women such as Jackie Shane, African-American transgender singer in the 1960s or Audre Lorde, now forgotten gay poet of the 1950s…
Women whom she points out have “done the impossible as if it were possible.” Mélissa Laveaux at Nougaro: guaranteed emotions.
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