System Band

The story so far.

Written and edited by Smokiller

System Band grew out of Les Frères Déjean after a failed trip to a promised gig in Montreal left several musicians detained and the group broken up, The Haitian Times recounts. Saxophonist and backing singer Isnard Douby gathered the members again under a new name, and the debut album Banm Passé arrived in 1980 with a cover showing the band leaping out of a spaceship. Writers at the paper describe the sound as konpa rèd, or hardcore konpa: a heavy backline, a horn section kept at the center of the music while many bands dropped theirs, and lyrics that often made polite society blush. The group released 20 albums, with hits such as Viagra and Cesar, and in the mid-2000s Douby brought in the young singer Dabenz for a few years. Douby, called the gentleman of konpa, died in 2021 at age 72 after being hospitalized in Palm Bay, Florida, and testing positive for covid-19.