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About this artist
Michel Joseph Martelly is a Haitian singer and former politician who served as the President of Haiti from May 2011 until February 2016. He is from Côte-de-fer, a commune located in the South East of Haiti. Martelly was one of Haiti's best-known musicians for over a decade, going by the stage name Sweet Micky. For business and musical reasons, Martelly has moved a number of times between the United States and Haiti. When travelling to the United States, Martelly mostly stays in Florida. After his presidency, Martelly returned to his former band and sang a carnival meringue entitled "Bal Bannan nan", as a mocking response to Liliane Pierre Paul, a famous Haitian female journalist in Port-au-prince.
As a singer and keyboardist, "Sweet Micky" is known for his Kompa music, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language, but he blended this with other styles. Martelly popularized a "new generation" of compas with smaller bands relying on synthesizers and electronic instruments. From 1989 to 2008, Martelly recorded over a dozen studio albums and a number of live CDs.