Welshy (real name Ross Walsh) has emerged as Ireland’s hottest young producer, independently achieving over 41 million streams and earning recognition from superstar names BTS, Kygo and The Chainsmokers. Now signed to Insanity Records, Welshy shares his new track ‘Haiti’. It’s the official version of his bootleg track, which went viral and exceeded a million streams. LISTEN HERE
It takes one spin of ‘Haiti’ to discover why it has captured the imagination of so many people. The topline, courtesy of Haitian vocalist Coralie Hérard, is irresistible: a gleaming mix of beauty, exuberance and sensual soul. It’s elevated by Welshy’s production, which skillfully highlights house music’s brightest and boldest traits in pop-orientated package with international appeal.
The Haitian Creole lyrics give the track an air of mystique, yet the story is just as interesting as you may imagine. It’s based on a Haitian folk song in which a young boy is sent to sell coffee at the market. Everything goes downhill for him from there: he gets lost, loses the coffee and ends up in trouble with the police. Not that the long arm of the law bothers him. He’s far more afraid of returning home to his mother empty-handed.
Welshy created the ‘Haiti’ bootleg after becoming enamoured with Hérard’s vocals on Michael Brun’s track ‘Peze Kafe’. It turned out that Brun had sampled the vocals from another recording, which had also sampled them from somewhere else. Welshy couldn’t source the original recording. He takes up the story:
“After a little digging we found the original vocalist on the sample! We reached out to Coralie via her socials and asked if we could reproduce her vocals and build on that. Coralie was in Montreal at the time. She loved the idea and a studio session was booked for her to record.
When I started the original demo version of ‘Haiti’, never in my wildest dreams would I have ever predicted the journey this track would take me on. My favourite thing about this record is it seems to have literally travelled around the globe. From Haiti to Ireland to Montreal to the UK and now the world.”
