A Haitian native from the small town of Port -au-Prince, Monvelyno Alexis began playing the Guitar at the age of 18. Born into a Christian family, Gospel music was his first musical experience.As a young boy, Monvelyno’s instruments included the Flute, Clarinet, and the Trumpet. However, his passion for the Guitar was supreme. By his early twenties, Monvelyno had matured into an experienced Guitar player and began playing with several gospel groups and experimenting with different genres such as Roots, Rock, R&B, Reggae, Fusion and Jazz. A year later, he was fortunate to meet and begin playing with Thurgot Theodat, one of Haiti’s most famous Jazz musicians who was working to fuse Jazz and Voodoo rhythms. This propelled Monvelyno into a deep ethnography of Voodoo music. Over the next three to four years, he visited traditional temples, as Lakou Souvenans, Lakou Badjo, Lakou soukri, and interviewed high priest and priestesses of Voodoo, and learned many of their ritual spiritual songs.Around the same time Monvelyno was also a painter, started by himself and found some help later from a few friends as, Pierre Austin, Richard Barbot, Mirand Marck Richard, and so on.Since then he is working every day as a professional of both Music and Paintings to get to the journey where he can express himself to translate his dream to the world.At the age of 27, after five years working with Thurgot and with the help of Richard Morse, Monvelyno started his own band featuring Jazz and Voodoo called K-fou La Croix (Crossroads). Meanwhile, he was also employed as Maestro of various different bands such as Chandel and Taino, Karess konpa, and performing with a spectrum of bands (e.g. RAM, Indigenous and B12, Mission, and Atists, as Samba Zao, Jean Raimond Giglio, Prince Guetchens, Raoul Dennis Junior, Jimmy Jn felix, Fabrice Rouzier, Pierre Rigaud Cherry, Eddy bourjolly and so on ).After many performances around the globe at various cultural festivals, Monvelyno permanently moved to America and settled in New York City. He was recently the music director of Manzè Dayila and the Nago Nation band , produced by Jamie Propp,and the group Parole. Although he continues to collaborate with different artists and perform with different bands, Monvelyno is working to produce Dlo, a Haitian Transcendent Jazz band. The project features Bass player and sound technician: Chico Broyer, Percussionist and Conga player: Sergo Decius, Classical Jazz Flutist: Fritz Placide, and himself on Guitar.These days Monvelyno is working on his musical project, in the mean time working with Robert Cenatus ( Bono ), and can be regularly seen in all sorts of musical style Jazz, konpa, roots, vodoo around New York City.
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