records that people once believed in.
Imagine the thousands of artists
who were destined to be legends
but for various reasons,
were just overlooked.
Many of these records
only exist in a handful of copies,
and some have never even been found,
never been heard.
They're literally endangered species.
I'll tell you a story
that for me sort of sums up
the value of the work of record diggers.
The story of a brilliant
Montreal musician and composer.
Henri-Pierre Noël
was born and raised in Haiti,
but he lived briefly
in the US and in Belgium.
He passed through Montreal
what was supposed to be for two weeks,
but he ended up
staying for the next 40 years.
When he was young,
he learned to play piano
and developed a very particular way
of playing his instrument:
very fast and almost like a percussion.
His style was a mix
of his Haitian influences and folklore
mixed with the American influences
that he grew up hearing.
So he created a mix
of compas mixed with funk and jazz.
As a young man,