Her Music Connect
Lalin St Juste Releases EP
Dedicated to Maternal Bloodline
and Haitian Heritage on
7000COILS
Lalin St Juste Releases EP
Dedicated to Maternal Bloodline
and Haitian Heritage on
7000COILS
Lalin St Juste has been a staple in the Bay Area music scene for a decade with her genre-bending band The Seshen. In 2021 Lalin officially launched her solo career with the release of her debut EP entitled ‘behind my eyes’ via 7000COILS, a label and art house she co-founded with Dan X (KKINGBOO) that is committed to elevating the queer voices of the African and Caribbean diaspora through the creation of digital and live portals and sacred play through a wellness lens.
Lalin returns in 2022 with the first of a two-part EP series, the first entitled Vertulie; a powerful homage to her ancestors and Haitian spirituality. Thanks to funding from the Gerbode Foundation, Lalin St Juste collaborated with Women’s Audio Mission, an organization established to support women and nonbinary creatives in the music industry, to record, engineer, mix and master Vertulie.
Named after Lalin’s maternal grandmother, Vertulie is both a love letter and sonic healing balm. The EP starts with Psalms 91, a prayer about protection recited in French by Lalin’s devout Christian mother, Louise St Juste. It is then followed by a swell of Haitian drums and a Vodou song dedicated to the lwa of initiation - Ayizan Vele Kete. In creating this juxtaposition, Lalin is healing the ways in which white supremacist religion has impacted her family; the blatant denouncement of Vodou for the sake of Christianity and the internalized assimilation and xenophobia around the Haitian language. The EP then moves to Roll Call, a calling forth of the ancestors on Lalin’s maternal side, the first being Dame Vertulie Valbrun, Lalin’s maternal grandmother. Wild Winds speaks to ancestral guidance and the inherent trust on the path of what is unknown.
I Believe In Things, the stand-out single from Vertulie (out now), continues this message; the intangible yet quite visceral experience of what exists beyond our physical plane, specifically the ways in which we are connected to spirit, our ancestors and the coded language of both. Vertulie closes with Ayiti, a song in Haitian Kreyòl affirming Lalin’s connection to the spirit of Ayiti, its culture, and the spirits therein, despite the impact of immigration and assimilation.
Lalin returns in 2022 with the first of a two-part EP series, the first entitled Vertulie; a powerful homage to her ancestors and Haitian spirituality. Thanks to funding from the Gerbode Foundation, Lalin St Juste collaborated with Women’s Audio Mission, an organization established to support women and nonbinary creatives in the music industry, to record, engineer, mix and master Vertulie.
Named after Lalin’s maternal grandmother, Vertulie is both a love letter and sonic healing balm. The EP starts with Psalms 91, a prayer about protection recited in French by Lalin’s devout Christian mother, Louise St Juste. It is then followed by a swell of Haitian drums and a Vodou song dedicated to the lwa of initiation - Ayizan Vele Kete. In creating this juxtaposition, Lalin is healing the ways in which white supremacist religion has impacted her family; the blatant denouncement of Vodou for the sake of Christianity and the internalized assimilation and xenophobia around the Haitian language. The EP then moves to Roll Call, a calling forth of the ancestors on Lalin’s maternal side, the first being Dame Vertulie Valbrun, Lalin’s maternal grandmother. Wild Winds speaks to ancestral guidance and the inherent trust on the path of what is unknown.
I Believe In Things, the stand-out single from Vertulie (out now), continues this message; the intangible yet quite visceral experience of what exists beyond our physical plane, specifically the ways in which we are connected to spirit, our ancestors and the coded language of both. Vertulie closes with Ayiti, a song in Haitian Kreyòl affirming Lalin’s connection to the spirit of Ayiti, its culture, and the spirits therein, despite the impact of immigration and assimilation.