BackstageThere is one small word I built a whole album around, and most people read right past it. Three letters. It sits in the middle of one of the boldest sentences in all of Scripture, and everything turns on it. The word is yet.
I made Haitian Heartbeat to the pulse of the tanbou drum, but its true heartbeat is that word, because I have watched my people say it with their whole chest, in seasons when nothing on paper gave them the right to, and mean it. That "yet" is the bravest thing I know.
The Sentence That Should Not Be Possible
Listen to the prophet Habakkuk, and do not soften it: Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation (Habakkuk 3:17–18).
Count the losses first. The fig tree, the vine, the olive, the field, the flock, the herd, that is not one setback, that is total collapse. Everything a person could lean on for provision and future, gone. And then, at the bottom of the ruin, the word turns: yet. I wrote the song Though the Fig Tree to walk that exact arc, the verses honest about the empty field, the accordion in a minor key, and then the flip to major on the one line that changes everything: yet I will rejoice.
From the "though the fig tree" to the "yet I will rejoice", same chapter, same mouth, same season.
That is the miracle. It is not two different days. It is the same breath. The lament and the joy live in the same sentence, and the joy does not require the circumstances to improve first.
Why This Album Had to Sound Like Haiti
I did not choose the Haitian heartbeat as decoration. I chose it because I do not know another people who preach that verse with their bodies the way the Haitian church does. I want to say this plainly and with honor, and without a trace of the tired pity that so often gets aimed at Haiti: this is a people who have buried more than most nations will ever be asked to, and who still fill storefront churches from Port-au-Prince to Little Haiti to Brooklyn with a praise that could raise the dead.
So the tanbou keeps beating under every song, and the rara horns blast, and the accordion shimmers, and none of it is spectacle. It is theology you can dance to. When I sing Yet I Will Rejoice with the diaspora named city by city, Miami, Brooklyn, Boston, Montreal, Port-au-Prince. I am not asking anyone to pretend the fig tree bloomed. I am saying the God of the salvation is bigger than the failed harvest, and the joy is aimed at Him, not at the yield.
I want to be clear that the tanbou and the rara belong in the sanctuary. Some have been taught to be ashamed of these instruments, as if the drum itself were suspect. But the psalmist commands the opposite: praise his name in the dance (Psalm 149:3). On Dance With the Tanbou I hand the drum straight to the King, because a redeemed people do not leave their own rhythms at the door. They carry them in and lay them on the altar. The heartbeat God gave Haiti was always meant to keep time for His praise.
The Joy Is a Person, Not a Mood
Here is where I have to teach carefully, because "just choose joy" can become a cruelty in the wrong mouth. The defiant joy of Habakkuk is not positive thinking. It is not pretending the diagnosis did not come or the visa did not get denied. Habakkuk names the disaster out loud before he rejoices. Honesty comes first.
The joy holds because of where it is aimed. Look at how the prophet ends the chapter one verse later: The LORD God is my strength (Habakkuk 3:19). The joy does not come from the situation improving; it comes from the God who does not change when the situation gets worse. That is why, on the album's peak, Heart Inside the Heart, I stop chasing and start receiving, because I read Galatians 2:20, Christ liveth in me, and understood that the rhythm keeping me alive in the dry season was never my own resilience. It was Yeshua, beating inside a chest that had run out of its own strength.
Weeping May Endure, But Watch the Morning
I close the record where the whole thing is headed, Joy Cometh Morning, and I let two verses carry it home. First, the promise the diaspora has clung to across every crossing: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning (Psalm 30:5). And under it, the mercy that makes each new morning survivable: they are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22–23).
Notice the shape of that hope. It does not deny the night. It says the night is real, and it has a length, and it has an end that God Himself sets. The "yet" of Habakkuk and the "morning" of the psalmist are the same faith facing two directions, one refusing to let go of joy in the dark, the other certain of the dawn. Between them there is no room for despair to take up permanent residence.
Who I Made This For
I made Haitian Heartbeat for the one in the silent season, the visa still pending, the diagnosis on the page, the field that yielded nothing this year. For the person who has been told their faith must be weak because they are still in pain, when in truth their faith is doing the hardest thing faith ever does: rejoicing without proof.
You do not have to wait for the fig tree to blossom before you say yet. That is the whole point of the word. You say it standing in the empty field, with your losses named honestly and your eyes fixed past them onto the God of your salvation. Yahuah has not forgotten you in the dry season. The morning He has appointed is coming, and it is not in doubt.
So beat the drum anyway. Say the defiant "yet." Joy cometh in the morning, and until it does, the God who is your strength is beating inside the very heart that thought it had none left.
