Michel Martelly which had been abolished in the 1990s by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Martelly was born in Port-au-Prince, the son of Gerard Martelly, a Shell Oil executive and Marie Madeleine De Martelly (1931-21 October 2016). On his mother's side, his grandfather Auguste de Pradines was a troubadour who wrote comic protest songs against the 1915-34 United States occupation of Haiti. After graduating from high school at the Institution Saint Louis de Gonzague, Martelly enlisted in the Haitian Military Academy, but (according to Martelly) was expelled after impregnating the daughter of a general. In 1984, he moved to the United States, and worked in
Michel Martelly (Sweet Micky) and sung a carnival meringue entitled "Bal Bannan nan" (Give her the banana), a message as a response to Liliane Pierre Paul, a famous Haitian female journalist in Port-au-prince. As a singer and keyboardist, "Sweet Micky" is known for his Kompa music, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language, but he blended this with other styles. Martelly popularized a "new generation" of compas with smaller bands relying on synthesizers and electronic instruments. From 1989 to 2008, Martelly recorded over a dozen studio albums and a number of live CDs. As a musician