Venue: The William Walker
Tickets: This event is FREE and unticketed however we recommend making a reservation to avoid disappointment. Reservations can be made online here or you can call 01962 807500.
Renes BBWI is a Haitian-born French musician-songwriter. As a child, he moved to Paris, where he grew up and studied. He started writing songs when he was in secondary school, although he could not play any instrument yet. In fact, the way he started learning to play music is very unusual.
Working as a full time teacher of modern foreign languages, Renes BBWI has been developing his music skills by playing with various bands and artists across Europe. Variety is for him the key to have an open mind to music, hence the fact that many genres are covered in his albums.
In April 2005, Renes BBWI released his first 10-track EP What are you Gonna Do, in the U.K. It was a very limited edition to survey the market as the album did not cover only one genre and therefore could not be labelled in the traditional way that albums are labelled. Following the success of the launch, Renes BBWI decided to embrace this nonconforming pathway. Some of his songs, namely What are you Gonna Do and Beat it like Bobby (which features only vocal and beatboxing, as a tribute to the genius Bobby Mc Ferrin) have been aired in the UK on Smooth FM, BBC Radio, Choice FM of London. The track Fontamara has been featured in a TV program called Las Casas del Cielo, in the USA.
In 2006, The Garden of Secret was released as Renes BBWI first fully marketable album. The 10 tracks of the album was likely to cover one genre that you will like, from urban soul to Jazzy ballad, not to mention the Afrobeat of "Pa Mete m Nan Zen".
Having become one of CDbaby’s favourite artists, the following year Renes BBWI launched his second solo album, I am Gonna showing a sense of maturity in his writing and compositions, whilst keeping the humoristic flavour in songs like My Definition, Je suis francophile and The Party.
Né Ici Vivre Ailleurs came out in 2008 in the UK and was commercialised worldwide in 2010 with L'amour et la misère, which is a tribute to people who are living in misery, namely those in Haiti after the devastating earthquake that has caused an unprecedented increase in poverty in January 2010.
The years passed and new albums are released: Infinite Horizon,
BAD NEWS,( This album has a lot of songs with "melodic rap" in it. :-). Oh, if you don't know what I mean by "melodic rap", go and have a listen.) What is Kompa.
Lastly Renes BBWI is also an inspirational solo performer and session player that has performed and continues to perform with some of England’s best musicians and bands. He has performed with Lonnie Liston Smith, Ti Corn, supported Maceo Parker at the Jardin des Plantes Festival in Paris, Osaka Monaurail, Blues singer Eric Bibb, Blues Rock artist Popa Chubby, the Brand New Heavies, James Taylor Quartet, etc…
In October 2017, Renes BBWI is releasing 2 more albums and one them is going to be a tribute to Jean Michel Jarre.