BY SIMON ROMERO


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ? His pack of Comme Il Faut cigarettes was almost depleted. The smell of rotting garbage on the street and fried pork from a stall next to his tent filled the air in Place St. Pierre. Some children looked at his crutch and grew silent. Beken, one of Haiti’s most gifted musicians, exhaled a veil of smoke.

“I should be in Miami living off the proceeds of my records,” said Beken, born here 54 years ago as Jean-Prosper Deauphin before adopting his stage name . “Instead I’m living in the filth of this place.”

Haiti is astonishingly rich in music, with musicians who are more successful and famous than Beken, including the Port-au- Prince hip-hop group Barikad Crew and the protest singer Manno Charlemagne, who now lives in the United States. But few composers occupy a space quite like Beken’s, whose songs of despair and redemption strongly resonate with Haitians during times of tragedy.

Peddlers sell pirated CD collections of his songs, including “Tribilasyon” (“Tribulation”) and “Mize” (“Misery”), on the streets of Port-au- Prince for about $1.30 apiece. Gritty photos of Beken, who lost his right leg at age 12 in a car accident, accompany the CDs. He sings in Haiti’s troubadour tradition, playing a guitar and emphasizing contact with the audience in songs of lament, humor and sometimes politics.

“Beken usually sold best after a hurricane,” said Jonas Gaspard, 25, a merchant selling bootleg music on a street near the wrecked presidential palace. “But since the earthquake, demand for his music is the strongest in years,” he said. “The customers love the way he sings about suffering.”

Beken knows a thing or two about life’s trials. Disabled as a child, he excelled in composing music. He enjoyed some success, particularly in the 1980s, before some bad decisions with his money pushed him into penury. He described himself as a “sentimental musician.”

Then came the earthquake. It destroyed his home, pushing him and his wife and three children into one of the city’s most squalid camps, in the Petionville hills.

“The only thing I can do is play music, and I haven’t touched my guitar since January 12,” he said. “ I don’t think I have the strength to write songs at the moment.”

By one recent evening, Beken had found his guitar, taking it to a small cafe in Petionville .

“Beken should be a rich man but he is not,” said Joseph Guyler Delva, a Haitian journalist in the audience .

Beken himself had a look of surprise, and something approaching delight, as he performed that night. He returned to his tent amid the stench of Place St. Pierre clutching his guitar. “I can sing again,” he said. “Maybe that means I can write a new song.”