Tabou Combo

The story so far.

Written and edited by Smokiller

Tabou Combo is a Haitian konpa band that WLRN traces to Pétion-Ville in the late 1960s. Schoolmates Albert Chancy and trumpeter Herman Nau met at the Lycée of Pétion-Ville and built the group around their shared love of music, and percussionist Yvon André, known as Kapi, joined at 16 after Chancy saw him playing with another local band. Several members later moved to New York, where the band came back together and soaked up the funk of James Brown, the Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire; WLRN points to the opening of Et Alors as pure funk. The group sings in Creole, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and its song Panama Querida is described as something close to a national anthem in Panama. By 2019 the band was marking more than 50 years as the self-described ambassadors of konpa. Its Apple Music catalog includes Aux Antilles from 1989, Tu as Volé, New York City, Mabouya and the 2020 live album Le concert des 50 ans.