Kompa (sometimes written konpa or compa) is a musical genre as well as a dance that originates from Haiti. It involves mostly medium-to-fast tempo beats with an emphasis on synthesizers.
Kompa direct was invented in the mid-1950s by a group of artists, already then famous, called Coronto International; it soon became popular throughout the Antilles, especially in Martinique and Guadeloupe, where it evolved into Zouk. Webert Sicot and Nemours Jean Baptiste became the two major powers in the group. Sicot left and formed a new group and an intense rivalry developed between the two, though they remained good friends. Nemours played a popular, improvised, mambo-influenced style called Kompa direct, while Sicot's sophisticated, Cuban-influenced cadence rampa was inaccessible to mainstream listeners.
It was used as a tool of the Duvalier dictatorship (both to trumpet praise as well as to divert attention from socio-political oppression) as well as later being a tool to question authoritarianism. Most Kompa in the late 20th and early 21st century deals with themes of heterosexual love relations and at times includes lewd and suggestive, potentially male chauvanist attitudes.
Unlike Zouk, the lyrics are mostly in Haitian Creole, and it has a faster rhythm than Zouk. Kompa songs are often strongly sexually explicit.
In North America, Kompa festivals take place frequently in Montreal, New York, Miami, and Boston.
