He lived abroad in exile twice, both during the 1980s and again during the years 1991–1994, when the country was ruled by a military junta led by Raoul Cédras.

Charlemagne grew up in Carrefour, to the south of the capital of Port-au-Prince, where he was influenced as much by the songs of the peasants who moved into the area in search of a livelihood, as by his Catholic school choir.

For a brief time following Jean-Bertrand Aristide's landslide victory on 16 December 1990, Charlemagne found himself in the role of a government booster.

He served as an unofficial minister in the Aristide cabinet, an assignment that ended abruptly nine months later, when a military junta overthrew Haiti's first freely elected president.

[4] Charlemagne died in Miami Beach, Florida on December 10, 2017, aged 69, after a struggle of several months with lung cancer which had metastasized to his brain.