Michel Martelly

On his mother's side, his grandfather Auguste de Pradines was a troubadour who wrote comic protest songs against the 1915–34 United States occupation of Haiti.

After graduating from high school at the Institution Saint Louis de Gonzague, Martelly enlisted in the Haitian Military Academy, but (according to Martelly) was expelled after impregnating the daughter of a general.

Michel Joseph Martelly (born 12 February 1961 ) is a Haitian musician and politician who was the President of Haiti from May 2011 until February 2016.

Martelly was one of Haiti's best-known musicians for over a decade, going by the stage name Sweet Micky.

For business and musical reasons, Martelly has moved a number of times between the United States and Haiti.

When travelling to the United States, Martelly mostly stays in Florida.

After his presidency, Martelly returned to his former band and sang a carnival méringue entitled "Bal Bannann nan" (Give Her the Banana), as a mocking response to Liliane Pierre Paul, a famous Haitian female journalist in Port-au-Prince.

As a singer and keyboardist, "Sweet Micky" is known for his Konpa music, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language, but he blended this with other styles.

Martelly popularized a "new generation" of compas with smaller bands relying on synthesizers and electronic instruments.

As a musician and club owner in Haiti in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Martelly became associated with the neo-Duvalierist Haitian military and police, including figures such as police chief Michel François, and he agreed with the 1991 Haitian coup d'état against Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In 1984, he moved to the United States, and worked in construction and briefly attended a community college in Miami.

In 1986, after one semester, he divorced his first wife, an American citizen, and returned to Haiti just as Jean-Claude Duvalier, then president-for-life, was heading into exile.

In 1987, Martelly returned to Miami with his then-girlfriend, Sophia Saint-Rémy, whom he later married in a small ceremony in Miami, Florida.

They returned to Haiti in 1988.

Upon his return to Haiti, Martelly had his first breakthrough in the music industry when he began playing keyboard as a fill-in musician in local venues in Pétion-Ville and Kenscoff, upscale suburbs of Port-au-Prince.

Martelly "sang playful, romantic numbers over a slow méringue beat called compas, the only music allowed under the Duvaliers."

By 1988, Martelly's musical talent, stage craft, and his pattering style of compas had gained tremendous popularity at El Rancho Hotel and Casino and The Florville, another local venues.

During the period of about 1988–2008 Martelly, using his stage name Sweet Micky, recorded fourteen studio albums and a number of live CDs.

His music features slow méringue, compas, troubadour, carnival méringue, rabòday, etc.

From 1989 to 2008, Martelly recorded over a dozen studio albums and a number of live CDs.

That year, he recorded his first single, "Ou La La", which became an instant hit, followed by "Konpas 'Foret des Pins'" in 1989, also from his debut album Ou La La.

His election campaign included a promise to reinstate the nation's military, which had been abolished in the 1990s by Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

After the 1991 Haitian coup d'état saw the expulsion of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, "Martelly opened a Pétion-Ville club called the Garage, where he entertained many of the coup's main architects, including the much-feared chief of national police, Michel François, later convicted in absentia for massacring Aristide supporters."

Martelly has been heralded as a pioneer of a unique genre of compas, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language.

Originally, compas, was the creation of Nemours Jean-Baptiste.

Martelly, a keyboardist and the self-proclaimed "President of Compas," popularized a nouvelle génération, or "new generation" style, of smaller bands with few members that relied predominantly on synthesizers and electronic instruments to reproduce a fuller sound.

Martelly's live performances and recordings are sometimes laced with physical humor and humorous sociopolitical commentaries and satires.

Although he is the most recognized musician and public personality in Haiti, Martelly's performance style has sometimes ignited controversy throughout Haitian communities.

In 1995, after Aristide had been restored to office, Martelly's name appeared on a hit list of coup supporters, and he stayed away from Haiti for almost a year.

During this time, he released a song, "Prezidan" (on the album Pa Manyen), "an exuberant ditty that called for a president who played compas".

In 1997, Martelly's crossover appeal to other musical genres was evident when hip hop star, Wyclef Jean of The Fugees featured him on the title track for Jean's solo effort Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival featuring the Refugee Allstars.

As Jean proclaims on 'The Carnival,' "Surprise – it's Sweet Micky, y'all!"

However, he did not run for political office until 2010, when he became a candidate for President of Haiti.

After the catastrophic earthquake, Martelly won the 2010–11 Haitian general election for his party Repons Peyizan (Farmers' Response Party), after a run-off against candidate Mirlande Manigat.

Martelly had come in third in the first round of the election, until the Organization of American States forced Jude Célestin to withdraw due to alleged fraud.

Martelly assumed his position of the President of Haiti on 14 May 2011 after René Préval retired to his home in Marmelade.

For the political scientist Frédéric Thomas, the accession to power of Michel Martelly in 2011 marked the beginning of a "form of legal banditry" and constitutes a key step in the process of decay of the Haitian state.

He resigned as president in February 2016.

He was sanctioned by the Canadian Government, which accuses him of involvement in human rights violations and supporting criminal gangs, on 17 November 2022.

Martelly was born in Côtes-de-Fer, the son of Gerard Martelly, a Shell Oil executive and Marie Madeleine Martelly (née De Pradines, b. 1931 – d. 21 October 2016).