Radio Boursiquot's FM 101.7 broadcasts from Jacmel, a coastal city in Haiti's Sud-Est department that has built an outsized cultural reputation for a town of its size. The station mixes local and international music with news and sports coverage, giving Jacmel the kind of everyday community radio that keeps a city connected between its biggest cultural moment of the year.
That cultural moment is Jacmel's Carnival, among the most distinctive in the Caribbean. The city is widely known as Haiti's handicrafts capital, home to roughly 200 papier-mâché artisans who spend much of the year building the elaborate masks that define the parade: oversized animal heads, caricatures of celebrities and politicians, and figures that have made Jacmel's carnival masks recognizable well beyond Haiti's borders. The parade itself runs for hours on Carnival Sunday, drawing thousands of costumed and painted participants alongside music groups, turning the city's streets into one continuous procession.
That heritage nearly vanished after the devastating 2010 earthquake, which badly damaged Jacmel along with much of southern Haiti. UNESCO responded by committing support specifically to rebuilding and safeguarding the town's cultural heritage and its carnival traditions, recognizing the celebration as something worth protecting as cultural infrastructure, not just an annual party. Jacmel went on to seek recognition as a UNESCO Creative City for its crafts and folk arts tradition, a bid built directly on the papier-mâché and artisan culture its carnival depends on every year.
A local station in a city like this carries real weight: it is where Carnival announcements, artisan workshop news and everyday local coverage all live, alongside the music that fills the rest of the calendar. Radio Boursiquot's FM 101.7 streams free on Radio Shuffle for anyone who wants a direct line into daily life in one of Haiti's most artistically distinctive cities.