Fareed Haque pays tribute to Haitian guitarist & composer Frantz Casseus on CASSEUS!

Haitian-American guitarist and composer Frantz Casseus (1915-1993) was one of the most overlooked figures in modern classical music. By fusing the European classical tradition with Haitian folk elements, the “father of Haitian classical guitar” developed a distinctive vocabulary on his instrument that was at once full of contrapuntal complexity and teeming with driving rhythm. Those qualities caught the ear of Chicago-based Fareed Haque, a modern guitar virtuoso who has tirelessly explored the realms of jazz, funk, fusion, Latin, world music and classical over the past four decades.

The son of a Pakistani father and Chilean mother, Fareed Haque studied jazz at North Texas State and classical at Northwestern University before embarking on a successful career, first in the Chicago Latin jazz collective, Chevere, then as a sideman to Cuban saxophonist, Paquito D’Rivera, before debuting as a leader in 1988 with Voices Rising on Sting’s short-lived Pangaea label. Haque has also toured with jazz icons as Joe Zawinul, Dave Holland, and Billy Cobham. But what he has done on this creative reimagining of them music of Frantz Casseus is something entirely different.

There followed a string of successful albums on Blue Note in the 1990’s before he formed his fusion-oriented Fareed Haque Group in 1995, his jamband Faraj Mahal in 2001, and his Indo-fusion flavored Flat Earth Ensemble in 2008. 

‘There’s such a strong ideas in Casseus’ music,” said Fareed Haque. “It definitely comes out of them melodic tradition of Haitian music, so there’s an inherent connection to the French language, French phrasing, French words, French impressionistic music. I’m sure the influence of Ravel ad Debussy was very strong in someone like Casseus. So it is elegant music with a French feeling in there, but there’s also an African feeling coming through in the rhythm. And to me, if you could take all of this incredible impressionistic music and distill it down to it’s essence and put it on one guitar, that would be Casseus.” ~ (Adapted from the liner notes by Bill Milkowski)