Valerie Jeanty, June 23, 1983, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
A Haitian electronic music composer, turntablist, and Berklee College of Music professor, Val-Inc creates music that evokes the esoteric realms of the creative subconscious known as Afro-Electronica. Incorporating acoustics and electronics, and combining the archaic with the post-modern, she incorporates her African and Haitian musical traditions into the present and beyond. He is considered a pioneer in the electronic music subgenre Afro-Electronica, also known as Vodou-Electro.
She is the great-grandniece of Haitian composer, pianist, and music director Occide Jeanty and granddaughter of GrandMe Shoun mambo (Vodou priestess). During the upheaval following the overthrow of then-president Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, Jeanty left Haiti for the United States. A Van Lier Fellowship helped Jeanty release her first album in 2000. She has performed at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and international festivals in Austria and Switzerland. In addition to New York City’s Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Village Vanguard, Jeanty’s installations have been exhibited at Saalfelden Music Festival in Austria, Stanser Musiktage in Switzerland, Jazz à la Villette in France, and the Biennale Di Venezia in Italy.
Tracie Morris chose Jeanty to engineer the sound for her poetry installation at the Whitney Biennial in 2002. Jeanty and Morris recorded the poems in a vestibule between two rooms in Jeanty’s home studio.