Kaytranada Rhythm of Change

Words by Kevin Wong

Photography by Liam Macrae

The recurrent adage “I feel it in my bones” suggests a strong sense of certainty towards something, despite the inability to explain why. This feeling is either instinctive or intuitive, which is to say, it is not accompanied by reason. Feeling something in your bones means feeling something visceral and beyond logical explanation.

This phrase describes precisely how I feel when listening to the music of Haitian-born producer, Kaytranada.

First stumbling upon the artist on SoundCloud— what I call the digital database for undiscovered talent—my first audible encounter was one where I unknowingly found myself head-bobbing and singing along to a song I hadn’t recalled ever hearing. A song which, I later realized, remixed Janet Jackson’s 1993 hit “If.” What struck me most wasn’t my seemingly prophetic recital of the song’s lyrics, but the track’s uncanny ability to make me want to get up and move. My first audible encounter quickly turned into an all-out excavation. Over the next few days I scoured the web in search of more funky tunes from the equally funky moniker. As I unearthed gem after gem, I found to my surprise that each of the tracks were quite different—it pulled from hip-hop and pop from the ‘90s and 2000s, sampling Missy Elliott, The Fugees and JustinTimberlake, but each track had a unique connection to an entirely disparate genre of sound. The one thing all the songs shared was their dance-centric sonance. As I’ve continued to follow Kaytra overthe past four years, I am equally intrigued as I am perplexed at how and from where this eclecticism in his music derives.

To understand the music, one must understand the man.

Born Kevin Celestian, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Kaytranada relocated to Montreal when he was just 3 months old. You couldn’t tell this from his thick Haitian accent—a strong indication of a deep connection to his cultural roots. A household constantly filled with melodies, he credits his oldersisters for his affinity towards late ‘80s, early-to-mid‘90s hip-hop and R&B—what he considers the “Golden Era of Hip-Hop.” The hit tracks from this era lay the foundation for much of his early remixesand were hugely responsible for escorting him intothe limelight. However, when asked about his influences, the first thing Kay will surely mention is the music his father would play throughout his youth.

It opened my mind to how I should sample stuff differently, rather than traditionally how hip-hop heads used to do. Make it like more 120 bpm dancefloor song. Nobody ever did that, so I thought you know what, I’ll be the first one to do it."

He lists pop music from the U.S., Latin music, disco and of course, Haitian music amongst the swath of genres played around the house.

Now 24 years later, Kaytra has not only adopted all of his father’s, sister’s and his heritage’s musical inclinations, but has gone and multiplied it tenfold. He explains his penchant towards digging for new music from around the world, oftentimes following musical trails that lead him to genres he has never heard before. “When I started making music, I sampled a lot, I naturally looked up samples from all around the world from psychedelic rock from Japan, R&B from Brazil, funk from Haiti.” One of his standout songs from debut album 99.9%

samples a song from Brazilian singer Gal Costas. What’s interesting about the sample is that he first heard it in a mix made by hip-hop producer and renowned beatmaker Madlib. In a very direct way, his attachment to both hip-hop and the unique cultural melodies, come together in each and every one of his tracks. This combination or fusion, he believes, is what sets him apart and allows him to navigate unchartered territories in music. “It opened my mind to how I should sample stuff differently, rather than traditionally how hip-hop heads used to do. Make it like more 120 bpm dancefloor song. Nobody ever did that, so I thought you know what, I’ll be the first one to do it.”

Kaytranada, like many of the other talented young artists with channels on SoundCloud and YouTube, does not pigeonhole himself to a specific sound or a single genre, but instead continues to try new things with his music. Being an artist of the digital age, you are afforded this much. Kaytra embraces the nature of music in this post-analog age, and utilizes the speed and interconnectivity of new technology and platforms to progress his sound, instantly. Kay says of the Internet, “It is straightforward, with people commenting and stuff. If the comments are positive, it pretty much speaks for itself.” In reference to the music in his 2016 debut album, he shares, “The songs were all pretty much done by 2014 and I was playing them live; people were ripping songs off my Boiler Room set, and releasing it on the web as ‘Unreleased Kaytranada.’ I was pretty much testing what people would think. What people in the internet think, check really if it’s gonna work, if those songs will be successful.”

This digitizing and sharing of music also opens the door to boundless possibilities. The majority of Kaytra’s collaborations—he has 11 features on his album—are created without ever sharing the same room with the other artist. “Most of my album was done just by sending files back and forth with people who I wanted to work,” he confesses. Undoubtedly there will always be traditionalists who would argue taking things of the studio and eliminating genuine artists’ interactions may take away from the magic of music-making. But how else could there be Craig David, Vic Mensa and Little Dragon all within the same album?

It’s crazy people are filling up my shows just to be there and listen to the sounds, it’s just a crazy evolution right now."

Be that as it may, technology alone does not make music. Music requires rhythm, it requires soul, and as a DJ and a producer, it requires you to perform for your audience and your fans. But it wasn’t until the late 2000s, that producers came into the line of sight with artists like Timbaland and The Neptunes releasing purely producer albums. Before then, producing was very much a behind-the-scenes role and only the DJs who scratched had any glimpse of the limelight. While Kay believes it’s deserving of producers to finally get their time to shine, he still can’t fully grasp the concept of producers performing on stage, saying, “It’s crazy people are filling up my shows just to be there and listen to the sounds, it’s just a crazy evolution right now that we all don’t quite understand.” He admits that he still feels “a bit awkward” that his sell-out shows are filled with people watching him "just on stage mixing."

Kaytranada has embraced this “evolution,” change itself is a big part of his music. Over the years, he’s transitioned from heavy electronic dance influences to a more hip-hop and trap-inspired sound. Producers in this day and age are subject to morphing sounds, ever-changing and developing alongside the advancements of music-making technology— software or hardware—not only affect but dictate the direction of their music output. This constant state of change is something Kay has been exposed to whether he realizes or not. Compas, or Kompa, the contemporary Haitian music genre boasts an ever-changing sound that merges African and Cuban rhythms with European ballroom music. Like the popular Haitian music genre, Kaytra’s aim for his music is to constantly transform and adapt in order to create music that is fresh. Made evident in his track “Together,” he masterfully marries a disco band from the ‘70s to an English electronic music duo and a rapper from Virginia. Kay shares with us he puts a heavy emphasis on producing music that has not been done. One of his intrinsic goals is to shed light on different genres and sounds: “I still always think about like ‘nobody ever did that before, nobody put that music up front; maybe they’re gonna discover that.” All the while looking to present these sounds in unique new ways.

Now, having listened to Kaytranada for several years later, it’s still quite difficult to fully decipher his music, especially when half of his songs are in foreign languages, but the mystery and imminent discovery is all part of the allure. The focus of his music is not on the context or meaning, there’s no profound meaning to read into it. To Kay, it’s about the feeling—visceral reaction you have when the beat hits your eardrums. “It communicates with the body, sonically. Even when songs have lyrics, they could mean nothing. Sometimes it’s just about listening to the instrumentals and that could be what brings people memories,” Kay admits. “My whole album, it’s all about that feeling.”

Kay starts a lot of his responses to a lot of music questions with, “I don’t know.” It isn’t simply an oral tick or filler words, he genuinely cannot fully explain what goes on behind his music. And his music doesn’t require explanation: “At the end of the day, music is just music. You feel it no matter what, if it touches you, it does.” His music is very much about the core of where all sounds derive from—the beat and the rhythm.

As Kaytranada continues to explore different genres and develop his own sound, we really don’t know where his music will end up. There’s a 99.9% chance that his music now will not sound like the music he’s making years, or even months from now. There is one certainty however, that both he and his evergrowing fanbase knows to be true: “It won’t be the same, but it’ll give you the same feeling.”