Wesner Domingue
January 25, 1934 – April 26, 1999
With abundance, he has boasted musical notes throughout his career as a trumpet player. From the Louis Lahens orchestra directed by Willy Frédérique to the Orchester de Titato Du Bel Air and the ensemble of Nemour Jean Baptiste where he composed with Gérard Thézan in 1961 ‘Toutou De Mer’ sung by Louis Lahens and Jean Claude Félix (TAM TAM Records ST 101). From the Ensemble of Nemour Jean Baptiste to the ensemble of Webert Sicot to Ti Jacques Tropical Combo in New York where he stopped playing for the general public. During his tenure in the ensemble of Nemour Jean Baptiste, he also composed ‘Ti Bouboute ”sung by Pierre Blain in 1962 (ILP / IBO Records 111). Unfortunately, his trumpet was extinguished on a Monday in April in the year 1999.
Wesner Domingue strung note after note with his virtuoso fingering and a hint of speed that emanates from the compulsion of the notes in several interpretations, called ‘chamber music’. He made many of us happy at Magique Ciné, at the Rex Theater, in dancing fairs of Radio Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in his rendition of ‘Carnival of Venice, a composition by the French André Campa which is dated 1699. During the winter of his career at Fort Dix International, he captivated the audience of La Ballade Dominicale by performing with Liautaud Domingue (Yaffa), Larose and his orchestra Adeline by Francois Guignard, Ave Maria No Moro by Herivel To Martins and Telephono a La Distancia, favorite song of the generation of the Guillaume brothers, Joe Trouillot and Guy Durosier. According to Dominique Janvier, maestro Nemour did not like this interpretation of the trumpet player too much (Carnaval De Venise); it appears that these two men could not agree on several points of view.
During the carnival parade of 1962-1963, Dominique Janvier has always reported, Nènè Domingue descended the Kompa Direk chariot angrily in the vicinity of the Rue Monseigneur Guilloux and the Des Frères Polycarpes school. The day after, he joined the four colors of maestro Webert Sicot and his group ‘Kadans Rampa’. A mouth plug would probably be the cause of this sudden rupture. Always, during the sixties, a simple accident almost damaged his lips; something sacred for a trumpet player; the lip. Fortunately, she hadn’t been severely damaged. However, if it were damaged, his career as a trumpet virtuoso would collapse like a sand castle.
In 1995, Denis Lefranc’s La Ballade Dominicale praised his merits and qualities in the presence of his family, his brother musicians and regulars of the club. On the stage, he brought out his qualities as a trumpet virtuoso and exhibited his skills as an actor or joker. In addition, he shared with the audience his impressions of youth in Haiti and how he adapted to it after years of absence in the country. Four years after the ovation of his colleagues and friends, he succumbed to an illness courageously endured on Monday April 26, 1999 two months after the obsequies of Liautaud Domingue (Yaffa). At his funeral, we noticed the presence of Charles Dessalines, Joe TRouillot, Denis Lefranc, Johny M Toussaint etc.
Adrien B. Berthaud.
