“The one who pushed me to listen to music in the hope that I might sing was Gary Didier Perez,” recounts Akinson Bélizaire, better known by the nickname Zagalo, in an interview given Thursday, September 18, on Radio Magik9. A lifelong friend and true brother at heart, Perez was one of the first to inspire in him a passion for music and entertainment. Yet nothing in Zagalo’s childhood, born January 26, 1974, in Petit-Goâve, seemed to predestine the boy to become an essential voice in Haiti’s media landscape.

From a modest Christian family marked by great economic hardship, he grew up in an environment where singing was constant. “I had a very difficult childhood, to the point that it was my intelligence that saved me,” he confides. Very early, he developed a spirit of initiative that would become his trademark: to pay for his schooling, he turned into a recruiter, convincing students to enroll at the school in order to benefit from his own free tuition. Already, the organizer in him was taking shape. At school, he organized recreational days and color-themed days, supported by DJ Fanfan, his first partner in entertainment.