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Nathalie Joachim

@njoachim

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• 💫 GRAMMY nominated Composer/Performer
• ✏️ Prof at @princeton
• 🎗️ Scholar-in-Res at @themuseumofmodernart

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One thing I can’t stand is getting lost in translation…!🫠

From Haiti to Harlem, Senegal to the States, our sounds have been migrating, remixing, and surviving for centuries. But when we only analyze them through a Western lens, we miss the connections that a curious and open ear might readily reveal.

Episode 5 of “Ways of Listening” is a sonic map: an invitation to trace music’s migration with boundless curiosity.

Listen with me. 🤎 by @njoachim

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a year ago

Have y’all watched the full music video for “Ki moun ou ye” though? 😏😅

There is only one place on earth I could have made this video and that is on my family’s land in Dantan, Haiti. The filmmaking genius @geneusgessica (aka my gorgeously talented soul sister 💞) captured the essence of this magical place in a way that makes my heart explode. She led a small but mighty team of badass Haitian women (@kekerex_12 and @sephora_monteau 💃🏾💫), AND nearly every single person in Dantan participated in one way or another…! A true testament to the power of family and community.

We were joined by the immensely talented Haitian dancer @johnnoiry who SLAYED. 🤩 The entire video is giving Haitian excellence and shows you why I stay wearing my Haitian flag with pride. 🇭🇹🔥💫

Head to the 🔗 in my bio to check it out on YouTube and let me know what you think! 🤎 by @njoachim

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3 years ago

Home. 🤎 To write music and manifest what is yet to come here in this 93 year old home built by my great grandfather. Where my father was born nearly 79 years ago. In chairs built for my grandmother. On land that seven generations of my family have tended. This. This is the greatest gift anyone could receive. It’s all I need. by @njoachim

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6 years ago

Three rooms that reminded me why I do what I do. 🌍

This summer, three spaces gave me something I wish every artist had — I break down what each one taught me in the video. But here’s what I didn’t say there: none of it was about the institutions. It was about the people who showed up ready to build something more human, together, outside the usual gates.

Deep gratitude to the ones who made them possible — @yaleism’s Institute of Sacred Music and the Institute of African Studies at @univofgh (Black Sacred Arts Conference), Leslie Tilley and the team at @mitmta’s Music Theory Pedagogies Reimagined, and @hedtearne, who built @un_settlement at Avaloch Farm.

The right room doesn’t just make space for your work. It reminds you you’re allowed to make it as fully and as freely as you are. That’s what I want for every artist reading this — and what I’m dreaming up more of myself. 🤎
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#composer #haitianartist #blackart #blackscholars #africandiaspora by @njoachim

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8 days ago

Some news I’ve been holding close: I’m a 2025 Pew Fellow. 🤎

Each year @pewcenterarts names a small cohort of Philadelphia-area artists and backs them with unrestricted support to keep making the work they feel called to make. To be one of them, as a Haitian-American composer whose practice is rooted in storytelling, heritage, and human connection, is something I’m still letting land.

My work has always been a testament to the histories, humanity, and futures of African diasporic people. This one reaffirms that the work is being seen. Deeply grateful, and just getting started. ✨

Portrait by @primarilydave for @pewcenterarts taken in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by @njoachim

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15 days ago

There’s a Haitian saying I was raised on — tout moun se moun. Every person is a person.

I can’t stop thinking about how radical that still is, in a world working overtime to convince us that some people count, and some don’t. It’s the idea that my country, the first free Black republic, was founded on.

And it’s the thing underneath everything I make. The thing none of us can afford to forget right now. 🤎🇭🇹
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#haitianart #haitianartist #blackart #composer by @njoachim

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22 days ago

First look: the score for The Flying Ace comes to life. 🎬🎶 Lead composer Carlos Simon, Jongnic Bontemps, Kathryn Bostic, Nathalie Joachim, Allison Loggins-Hull and Levi Taylor's music with the film was extraordinary. Under the baton of Music Director Courtney Lewis, this collaboration between six phenomenal composers is bringing a piece of Jacksonville history back to full, sweeping life.

We cannot wait to share it with you on November 14. Tickets at JaxSymphony.org

(Not pictured: Kathryn Bostic) by @njoachim

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23 days ago

Konbit: the Haitian word for when a community comes together to make something possible through communal cooperative labor. What the world tries to convince us is impossible.

This is the story behind the music video for “Ki moun ou ye”, made in my family’s farming village with my relatives and neighbors, and shaped by the vision of the brilliant Haitian director Gessica Geneus @gessicageneus . No big budget. No huge team of professionals. And everything that actually matters.

In a world built to keep us isolated and convinced we’re not enough, coming together to make something beautiful is a radical act. I know we all need to be reminded of that. 🤎🇭🇹

Directed by Gessica Geneus · made by my community, with everything and nothing at all.
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#blackscholars #africandiaspora #haitianartist #haitianart by @njoachim

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a month ago

Ghana. 🇬🇭

This summer I traveled to Accra for the Black Sacred Arts Conference co-hosted by Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music and the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and shared the scholarship behind my opera, rooted in Haitian Vodou.

For the first time in my life, I stood in a room full of Black scholars from across the diaspora, the Caribbean, the Americas, Africa, the global South. Wildly different vantage points on an impressive array of music and art, and still, this deep, unspoken understanding between us. There’s something sacred about Black art in conversation that’s intercontinental, inter-diasporic, people carrying completely different histories, reaching for the same truths.

I came home carrying that room with me. Being on the continent, in a space that centered us, reminded me how rarely I get to feel that integrated and how much we build when we finally find each other. 🤎
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#blackscholars #blackart #ghana #africandiaspora taken in Accra, Ghana by @njoachim

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a month ago

At ten years old, I learned to leave my grandmother’s teachings at the door.

Inside those institutions, what she gave me didn’t “count.” They have a way of deciding whose knowledge is real and calling it merit. But that’s about control. It means they can decide not just what matters, but who.

It took me years to understand that the knowledge they trained me to leave behind was the foundation of everything. In fact, some of the most profound things I know came from people those same rooms would call unqualified, people who make something out of nothing, every single day.

That knowledge counts. We are just taught not to see it.
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#musicscholarship #composer #blackcreative #musictheory by @njoachim

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a month ago

You already know more than you think you do.

I say it to myself, to my students, and I’ll say it to you: the thing between you and your work isn’t just more knowledge. It’s trusting what you already carry and giving yourself the permission no one else is going to hand you.

Start there.
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#musicscholarship #composer #blackartist #diasporaart #womencomposers by @njoachim

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2 months ago

Composer Nathalie Joachim explains how silent film creates the perfect canvas for music to illuminate subtext and deepen storytelling in The Flying Ace. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear an original score by six of today’s leading composers, performed live to this historic film. Tickets at JaxSymphony.org. #FlyingAce2026 @njoachim by @njoachim

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2 months ago