In losing the cheque destined to pay for her piano lessons, the six year old Mélissa Laveaux seals her own fate: she has to teach herself music, which she does by ear and through books. Thankfully, her mother has a liking for French singer-songwriters and Haitian big band jazz which she indulges in during long sessions of hair braiding, whilst her father, an amateur guitarist, spontaneously offers her a guitar the summer of her thirteenth year.
So is it fair to refer to Mélissa’s sound as an eclectic mix? Without a doubt, how else could it be described? Born in Montreal in 1985 to immigrant Haitian parents, she grew up in Ottawa, Ontario in a mostly Anglophone community. One of her first challenges then was to integrate herself in her new environment without leaving behind anything cherished from her original Franco Creole culture.
At the crossroads of her multiple identities, Mélissa became increasingly aware of the gap that lay between her own identity and this new world. A creative teenager she found refuge in music, piecing together mix tapes from late night radio hits much to her parents’ despair, both teachers with hopes of her becoming a physician. Undeterred, she continued to develop her musical taste, and discovered, in no particular order North American folk music (Joni Mitchell, Feist, Tracy Chapman), British trip hop (Martina Topley-Bird, Morcheeba), alternative psychedelic Brazilian music (Adriana Calcanhotto, Os Mutantes), recent highlights in hip hop and nu-soul (Erykah Badu, Common, The Roots, The Fugees), as well as the great voices of the African-American tradition(Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin), and the more geographically distant stars of world music (Rokia Traoré, Lhasa).
Brewing all of these influences into an instinctive yet potent mix and working daily on her guitar skills, the young Mélissa created her own, very personal, very rhythmic style of instrumental accompaniment. Soon the lyrics followed, and with them her first songs, resulting in a resolutely contemporary songwriting style which integrated all of her underlying cultural facets. However, not wanting to brandish these in the form of a political manifesto, she opted instead for the road of intimate storytelling, thus commencing the adventure of a free voice speaking candidly and confiding all to her audience.
Music however, wasn’t everything. Like her siblings, Mélissa was determined to pursue her studies in Social Studies. And yet her need to keep expressing herself artistically remained urgent, and she perceived her academic and musical achievements as mutually influential. “You can’t have one without the other,” she says, determinedly. “I need music to live, and I need to live in order to inspire my music.” True to her convictions, she eventually graduated from the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Arts in Ethics & Society.
Throughout her studies, she performed at the open mike nights held in her student bar and was spotted by a young percussionist by the name of Rob Reid who encouraged her to jam with him. Eventually they formed a band, and would hit the road at the weekend, playing campus pubs and small bars all over Canada, eventually gaining attention from local as well as national media (CBC, SRC) and music institutions (Ontario Council of Folk Festivals, Montreal International Jazz Festival). Now twenty-one years old, she self-produced an album which she published on MySpace. 2007 came around and with it the French label NØ FØRMAT!, who signed her straight away after seeing her perform in Montreal. That same year she recorded her first genuine album, Camphor & Copper, produced from the base tracks of her self-produced debut.
Apart from Elliot Smith’s Needle in the Hay and the late Eartha Kitt’s I Wanna be Evil, two masterful reinventions that somehow fix the imaginary boundaries of her musical universe, Copper & Camphor is composed of entirely original pieces which combined, reproduce that impressive and paradoxical mixture of maturity and freshness that characterizes all great songwriters. With this album, all of Mélissa’s pent up creative energy accumulated over years of apprenticeship seems to explode at once, immediately hitting the right note, the minimalist arrangement providing a perfect setting for the poetic impact of the songs’ lyrics. And last but not least, there’s her voice. It unfurls, majestic yet fragile, profound and sensual, deliciously young and immediately seductive. Almost unconsciously, it seems marked by the ever-present trilingualism that has undoubtedly marked her own life: the rhythmical fluidity of English, the nonchalant syncopation of Creole, and the harmonic sophistication of the French.
There is no doubt that this album guarantees the twenty-three year old singer’s entry into the ranks of the most promising singer-songwriters of our times.
