Today we’d like to introduce you to Claudens Louis.
Claudens, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am Haitian-American, born and raised in Miami, FL, in the heart of Little Haiti. My father turned me on to various styles of music from a very young age, including music from our culture and a lot of popular music of the time. Growing up we would listen to anything from the traditional Haitian artists like Tabou Combo, Skah Shah and King Posse to the great American artists like Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson and Celine Dion to name a few. Over the years of my development, I took a liking to other genres and artists like The Roots(Hip Hop), D’Angelo(R&B), Linkin Park(Rock), Lil Wayne(Rap), Gustav Holst(Classical), and the first tenor saxophone sounds in the jazz genre that I heard and fell in love with were Dexter Gordon and Coleman Hawkins. All of these genres and artists have a huge influence on the sound of my original music and the sound of my group, The CieL Experience.