Coupe Cloue, king of twoubadou, dies

Jean Gesner Henry died on this day. Haiti knew him as Coupe Cloue, a nickname he earned as a hard defender for Aigle Noir AC in Port-au-Prince: cut and nailed. He was born in Leogane on 10 May 1925. He put down the boots for a guitar, led the Ensemble Select, and built a sound out of kompa, Kreyol wordplay and Congolese soukous that filled dance halls from Port-au-Prince to Paris to Kinshasa. He recorded for more than forty years and the crowd called him the King.