JahNesta
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Real Name: Alain Moraille
Artist Name: JahNesta
Birthday: March 30, 1975 (Easter Sunday)
Birthplace: Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Official Site: www.jahnesta.com
It is in November 2003, that Jahnesta’s first album came out with ten (10) hits, all loaded with messages but at the time light and almost aerial in their tune.
A new adventure for the group! A breath long awaited by the public!
If the reggae hit of “Haitian Soldier” is sometimes attributed to the group, the CD’s very title “Solda Jah” clearly symbolizes the group’s leader Alain Moraille’s vision and stand.
His authentic style, his contagious melodies and his universal charisma have already conceded to the group the right to affix the seal of success on their music, in a world that has become increasingly competitive.
Alain Moraille, 28 years old, catalyst and lead singer of the group, truly concretizes the dream that he has ceaselessly stirred in his soul for several years.
He remembers having caught the reggae virus from his uncles when he was only five years old, when a group of teenagers made him listen to Bob Marley’s mythical “Natty Dread” on the old phonograph perched in his grandmother’s living room in Place Boyer in the town of Petion-Ville, a suburb of the Haitian Capital.
While other children of his age only decorated their rooms with posters of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Spiderman and other “made in the US” childhood gadgets, the walls of Alain’s room were lined with Bob Marley’s pictures that he secretly cut out from the newspapers that his “older” uncles inadvertently left around.
Very soon, he had memorized all the hits, and every time an opportunity came up, he asked that a LP or a cassette of the Master be given to him as a gift.
In a kind of progressive spiral, a concatenation of events resulted in Alain’s shyly strumming an old acoustic guitar when he was 17, and this gesture served him as premonitory musical stepping stone….
During that same year, under the instructive guidance of Daddy Beaubrun (Bassist of the Boukman Eksperyans group), his “live” solo interpretation of “Redemption” made him the winner of the “Talent Show” at Café des Arts. The path seemed then to open up before him.
Alain’s direct implication in the world of Music at that moment may be only due to the fact that he had discovered himself and until then, he had developed another passion just as intensely as he loved reggae: Soccer that he practices with assiduousness and determination, in his neighborhood and on the greens of the centenarian, studious and catholic schooling Institution of Saint-Louis de Gonzague where Sports are also a religion.
As a full titular of all age group teams of that school, his talent as a soccer player are first noticed by the scouts of the Violette Athletic Club, a venerable and popular team of a first division Haitian team, also a centenarian institution, then by those of the Florida Institute of Technology upon his friend Fritz-Gerald Haig’s recommendation, he too an eminent soccer player.
Alain became now the beneficiary of a sports-study scholarship that enabled him to first learn Business Management at that University, then at the Miami International Institute.
During his stay in the country of Rock music, his encounter with Rohan and Kymani MARLEY and the friendship that developed between these three “sons” of the reggae legend lead him to deepen the spiritual aspects of this music. His deadlocks that he lets grow beginning in 1997 are part of this quest for spirituality through reggae.
After his studies, his decision to return to Haïti is for a large part motivated by his desire to create a musical group with talented but unemployed musicians in his country.
Also, with the same discipline of life that his duties as a sportsman had imposed upon him, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the world of work as soon as 1999.
His modest income allowed him from time to time to buy a few musical instruments and basic sound effect materials.
Timidly, he engaged contacts with instrumentalist musicians who share the love of reggae with him. Slowly but surely, a group was born with the six remaining musicians, a group that in the beginning could be considered as a “tribute band” to Bob Marley.
In December 2000, after three months of assiduous rehearsals, JAHNESTA performs for the first time in public, at the SUN AUTO-SHASA Christmas Fair in Tabarrre, before a dubitative at first, then attentive and receptive audience during the unfolding of the interpretations, and finally a conquered and ravished crowd at the end of the presentation.
Throughout 2001, Alain’s very demanding work as Manager of a frozen goods distribution company, logistical problems resulting from the distance that three of the musicians who formerly with the “PAYSANS DE KENSCOFF” group slowed had to cover back and forth, slowed down the pace of rehearsals and forced JAHNESTO to only make rare appearances in public.
The positive feedback however from the public at each of these rare performances incited Alain to not to become disheartened, namely after the chain departure of four of his five musicians.
In January 2002, a new stage was passed. He decided to definitively quit his job to devote himself totally to structuring of his group. New musicians were hired. The brass rhythmic section and the quire were reinforced.
This was done with his father Lesly MORAILLE’s encouragement, but also and above all, with the priceless support of his friend Patrice MILLET, a Sports Educator like himself, at the same soccer school, who made him benefit by his advice and his experience accumulated over ten years of management of DJAKOUT MIZIK, a Haitian musical group that hatched in 1993, and since 1999, has now been considered as the unchallenged leader of the COMPAS trend.
Several performances were planned and JAHNESTA took part as guest artist in several major musical events in Haïti (Anniversaries of DJAKOUT MIZIK, SWEET MICKY, DEGA, KAMPECH), tours of the Antillean singer N’Jie and of the Jamaican BEENIE MAN.
Since 2002 also, several new titles of his own creed that he had kept in his drawer began to be put together by the whole group within which homogeneity started to build along the course of rehearsals and public performances.
Before the crisis that the country went through, JAHNESTA performed on the average twice per month.
Mouth to ear advertisement worked marvelously at each of these musical evenings, in the popular clubs of Petion-Ville (CAFÉ DE ARTS, BRASSERIE Q-Y, CLICK 123) and the group draws an increasingly faithful and always enlarging audience.
In May 2003, thanks to the financial and logistical support granted namely by the ZEMES PRODUCTION company, JAHNESTA entered into the mythical recently renovated and modernized studio AUDIOTECH the ten (10) hits that appear on the group’s first opus.
The first album benefited by the talents of arranger Fabrice ROUZIER (TABOU COMBO’s keyboardist, moved on to MIZIK-MIZIK and initiator of HAITI TROUBADOUR) who alongside this project has succeeded in enrolling Alain in the HAITI TROUBADOUR adventure, as guest singer having participated since December 2002 in most of the concert events of that group, both in Haïti in their successful tours outside of the country (French Antilles, Dominican Republic, Miami, New York, Boston).
After the launching of this first album in November 2003, ALAIN MORAILLE feels ready to conquer the world and to contribute in his own way in revalorizing his country’s image on the eave of the celebration of its 200 years of Independence.
His symbolic birth on an Easter Sunday will help him, he hopes, shed some light with his voice on the special piece of land that Haïti is .
