Nicolina Florentino

Nicolina Florentino, the lady who plays the saxophone in ZENGLEN, is a woman of character. Her reason to stick with ZENGLEN in spite of her great admiration for RICHIE, who is leaving the band, should be a great lesson of altruism for all these Haitian Konpa artists. She has chosen to stay in ZENGLEN only to allow her bandmates to continue to have a job and a paycheck to get by.

Asked by Haitianbeatz if she would leave ZENGLEN to join RICHIE in the new band it is said that he and GAZZMAN will put together, she said: “I love Richie, I love his talent, and I love working with him, I would love to follow him anywhere he goes, but however, I cannot see myself doing that to the other guys, if me leaving Zenglen will create an instability to the band, I would not do that…what will the other guys do is Zenglen breaks, this is their livelihood, Brutus and the others live of that music, they don’t have other jobs…I would not jeopardize the life of many just for one guy. Richie is very talented, he will survive, he can produce, he can join any band he wants and he can create a successful band by himself, but not the other guys in Zenglen, they rely on each other…so therefore, I will stick with the band even if down deep inside I love Richie and would love to work with him…”

How could you not love this lady? I wonder how many of these mercenaries in this Konpa business would put aside their selfish needs and interests to stick with a band only to allow their fellow bandmates to continue to earn a living. Well, Nicolina is teaching them a moral lesson of altruism I had never seen taught in this business before. You know what? I am going to see if this woman is not going to be recognized and awarded this coming year in any award ceremony where Konpa artists are being recognized and awarded for their contributions to the advancement of our music. You go, Nicolina! That was a great call on your part. You are, indeed, a great woman, a woman of unseen character.