The store formerly known as Antilles Mizik!
January 3, 2009
After 16 years of serving Haitian music lovers in Queens and Long Island, the house that Philippe Lavelanet built has shut its doors a week ago on the 28th of December. According to Lavelanet, the business is not lucrative enough to keep him around and the people in the business are too ungrateful to even encourage business people to stay the course.
But here’s the good news: you will still be able to take a trip to Linden Boulevard and buy your CD’s!!! At least that is according to Mario DeVolcy who informed us that the store will reopen its doors to the public under a different name, which they haven’t come up with just yet. The former drummer of the legendary Big Band Bossa Combo teamed up with businessmen Elie Maurice and Joe Adisson to purchase the business from Lavelanet and the transactions should wrap up by next week.
According to DeVolcy, we’re looking at a grand opening sometime late January and this time the place will not just be a CD store but also a place to socialize with Haitian artists, media and other music lovers; it will be like a small Hall of Fame place, he said, and we’ll also be running our Artists Booking Agency from there.
So folks get ready to stroll into the store formerly known as Antilles Mizik but don’t get star struck if you run into the likes of Alan Cavé or Gazzman Couleur, or Nia, or Dadou Pasket or Shoubou… who just happen to be hanging out in there. Philippe Lavelanet will retain the ownership rights of the material he has released in the past and will make them available via the internet wholesale and retail.
