Kompa

What it is

Nemours Jean-Baptiste, a saxophonist in Port-au-Prince, slowed the local meringue down in 1955 and called what came out konpa direk. Within a couple of years he and Webert Sicot were running rival orchestras and rival dance styles, and the argument between them shaped Haitian popular music for a generation. The rhythm keeps a Haitian vodou drumming inheritance in plain sight: a kata figure on sticks, and a tanbou answering it. What Nemours added was restraint. Kompa moves slowly, its bass plays very few notes, and it leaves enormous room in the middle for horns and, later, for synthesisers. Zouk borrowed from it directly, and the two sound like relatives because one of them is.

What it sounds like

Warm and unhurried. In the early records, a big horn section over congas and a kit, all in one room. From the eighties onward, a drum machine, a chorused electric guitar playing single notes high up, a synth pad and an electric bass that plays perhaps four notes a bar and lets each one ring. The percussion is a hand drum and a metal scraper, both dry. Modern kompa is mixed cleanly and quietly, with the vocal in French or Creole sitting well forward and a lot of space around it. The whole style is arranged so that nothing has to shout.

Key elements

• The kataA stick figure carried over from vodou drumming, which in a modern kompa band is played on the side of a drum or by a shaker. It is the fixed reference underneath everything.
• The tanbouThe hand drum answering the kata, with its heaviest stroke on the and of each half bar. This is where the swing of kompa actually lives.
• A bass with roomThree or four notes a bar, long, with rests between them. Kompa basslines are the least busy in this entire family and that is deliberate.
• The beat 4 snareOne rim or snare on beat 4 rather than a backbeat on 2 and 4, which is what stops kompa from tipping into a soul feel.
• SlowUnder 110, usually. Everything around it in the Caribbean got faster through the eighties and kompa did not, which is part of why it stayed a couples dance.

How to get them

• KataSticks on bamboo or on the shell of a drum, on the offbeat sixteenths, quiet and constant. The lane exports as a woodblock, which is the nearest GM slot to a struck kata. If your band plays that part on a metal cha-cha instead, load the cha-cha over it.
• TanbouA conga tuned low with the tail left on, playing an open tone on the and of 2 and the and of 4 and quieter strokes before them. Do not gate it.
• BassWrite the line, then remove half the notes and double the length of what is left. If it sounds too empty on its own it is probably right in the arrangement.
• GuitarSingle notes, not chords, high on the neck, clean with a slow chorus and a long delay set to a dotted eighth. Play a two bar figure and repeat it for the whole song.
• Keep the mix quietDo not compress the drum bus more than three or four decibels. Kompa depends on the difference between a hand drum stroke and a stick, and heavy bus compression erases exactly that.
• SwingStraight, at 100. The lilt comes from where the tanbou lands, not from a swing setting, and at this tempo any shuffle makes the scraper sound like triplets.

Reference points

Nemours Jean-Baptiste and Webert Sicot, then Tabou Combo, Coupe Cloue, Skah Shah, System Band, T-Vice, Carimi and Klass. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.