Toto Bissainthe (2, April 1934– 4, June 1994) was a Haitian actress and singer known for her innovative blend of traditional Vodou and rural themes and music with contemporary lyricism and arrangements.
[1][2] Born in Cap-Haïtien in 1934, she left Haiti at an early age to pursue her acting studies abroad.
[3] With a groundbreaking performance in 1973 at La vieille grille in Paris, Toto Bissainthe established herself as singer-songwriter-composer, stunning the audience with her soul-stirring renditions of original compositions that paid homage to the lives, struggles, miseries and spirituality of working class and rural Haitians.
[4] An artist in exile, Toto Bissainthe will be unable to return to the Haiti that so inspired her until the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986.
However, the multiple disappointments of the unending democratic transition and political infighting would forever embitter the outspoken artist, who had long dreamed of a return to help rebuild her motherland.
Saddened by Haiti's social and political degradation, Toto Bissainthe's health would enter a downward spiral ending with her death from liver damage on June 4, 1994.
She also had some roles in film, including Les tripes au soleil and En l’autre bord [5].
In a 1967 Haitian newspaper, a journalist wrote the following praising her album: Toto Bissainthe will, at the very least, have the merit of having introduced through song to Haiti, a way that is only reserved to a minority.
In a newspaper clip from the year 1980, there’s an article titled Toto Bissainthe: The Sortileges of the Black diaspora which states, “Her creation has for ambition to refer to a lost freedom that has yet to be found.
[11] In what she called a “slow return”, “she pursued creative work with the support of her spouse, the American journalist Michael Norton”.
[10] Toto Bissainthe married American journalist Michael Norton; he died in 2008 at the age of 66 years.
[3] "Toto (Marie-Clotilde) Bissainthe" pp 153–159 in Mémoire de femmes by Jasmine Claude-Narcisse, UNICEF Haïti, 1997