CMC Int’l Jazz Fest presents Val Inc.

Val Jeanty, also known as Val-Inc, is an Haitian afrofuturist, composer, turntablist, and professor at Berklee College of Music. Jeanty is a pioneer of the electronic music subgenre Afro- Electronica incorporating Haitian Vodou rhythms with electronic instruments.

Jeanty is the great-grandniece of Haitian composer, pianist, and music director Occide Jeanty and granddaughter of a mambo (Vodou priestess). Growing up in Bizoton Fontamara, Haiti, Jeanty attended Sacré Coeur, which she describes as “a prestigious Catholic school, in a ritzy-bourgeois area” with strict rules. Jeanty left Haiti for the United States in 1986, when upheaval following the overthrow of then-president Jean-Claude Duvalier led to school closures.

Jeanty issued her first album in 2000 thanks to a Van Lier Fellowship, and has performed at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and internationally at music festivals in Austria and Switzerland. Jeanty’s installations have been showcased in New York City at the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Village Vanguard and internationally at Saalfelden Music Festival in Austria, Stanser Musiktage in Switzerland, Jazz à la Villette in France, and the Biennale Di Venezia in Italy. In November of 2019, Roulette Intermedium, with New Music USA and the New York State Council on the Arts, commissioned interdisciplinary artist Risha Rox and Jeanty’s collaborative work, Ritual Merging.