Mélissa Laveaux is a queer Haitian-Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist who has lived in Paris for a decade. She has released three albums under the NOFormat! label and recently founded her music publishing imprint Twanèt, named after the maternal grandmothers of herself and her business partner and manager Oriana. After creative residencies in Colombia and Rome at Villa Médicis, Mélissa wrote and performed a musical about a vengeful divine incarnation of the collective memory, Mami Wata with the musical And Sometimes the Flower Is Just Another Knife. That same year, she released her most recent album, Radyo Siwèl (2018), a revival of traditional and lost resistance songs that served the Haitian people during the 20-year U.S. military occupation that changed the country forever. An avid cook, Laveaux is working on a larger work about various encounters with death throughout her life and the different foods she would have served at each funeral, titled Chadèk: a journal of sweet and savory aches. She is also working hard on her fourth LP, which is scheduled for release in early 2021.
Artist
Mélissa Laveaux
