Chapter 1

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DEDICATION For every grandmother whose songs deserve their real name.

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Sonia Baptiste heard the music disappear on a Friday afternoon.

She was sitting in her grandmother's living room in Port-au-Prince — well, not the actual Port-au-Prince, but the part of Brooklyn that her grandmother had turned into Port-au-Prince through sheer force of will, with Haitian paintings on every wall and the smell of griyo always in the air — when Grandmère Celeste stopped playing her accordion and said, "Someone is stealing my songs."

Sonia, who was eleven and accustomed to her grandmother's dramatic statements, looked up from her math homework. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that the songs I play — the old songs, the traditional Haitian songs that my mother taught me and her mother taught her — are appearing on the internet. On a music app. Under someone else's name."

Sonia put down her pencil. This was interesting.

Grandmère Celeste was not a famous musician. She was a retired nurse who played accordion at community events, at Bahá'í devotionals, and on her front porch on summer evenings. She played old Haitian folk songs — songs about the land, the sea, the struggle for freedom, the sweetness of life. Songs that existed in no songbook because they had been passed down through generations by ear and by heart.

"Show me," Sonia said.

Grandmère Celeste pulled up an app on her phone. There, listed under the name "Caribbean Beats Productions," were six songs. Sonia pressed play on the first one.

The melody was unmistakable. It was "Ti Zwazo" — the little bird song that Grandmère had played at every family gathering since Sonia was a baby. The arrangement was different — electronic beats, synthesized instruments — but the melody was Grandmère's. The words, translated into English, were Grandmère's grandmother's words.

"They took it," Grandmère said. Her voice was steady, but her hands were shaking. "They took our music and put their name on it."

Sonia felt something hot rise in her chest. Not just anger — indignation. The specific kind that comes when something precious is taken from someone who doesn't have the power to fight back.

"Grandmère," she said. "I'm going to find out who did this."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. But I'm a detective. That's what I do."

This was technically an exaggeration — Sonia had solved one mystery in her life (the Case of the Missing Library Books, fifth grade, the culprit was a first-grader with good intentions) — but she believed in stating your intentions boldly and figuring out the details later.

The investigation had begun.

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Sonia enlisted her friend Marcus — not because Marcus was a detective (he was a drummer) but because Marcus understood music the way Sonia understood mysteries, and this case was going to need both.

"Caribbean Beats Productions," Marcus said, reading from his laptop. "They have a website. It says they're a 'boutique music label specializing in authentic Caribbean sounds.'"

"Authentic," Sonia repeated. "That's one word for stolen."

"They have thirty-seven songs on the app. All labeled as 'traditional arrangements' by someone named Vince DiMarco."

"Who's Vince DiMarco?"

Marcus clicked. "He's a music producer in New Jersey. His bio says he 'discovers and preserves Caribbean musical traditions for modern audiences.'"

"Discovers," Sonia said. "He discovered songs that have existed for two hundred years and put his name on them."

The more they dug, the uglier it got. Vince DiMarco had been traveling to Caribbean communities — in Brooklyn, in Miami, in New Orleans — recording elderly musicians during community events, festivals, and church gatherings. He recorded their songs without asking permission, took the melodies home, added electronic production, and uploaded them to streaming platforms under his own name.

He wasn't breaking any law — traditional folk songs often have no copyright, because they belong to communities, not individuals. But the absence of a law didn't mean the absence of a wrong.

"This is like someone walking into a museum, photographing all the art, printing copies, and selling them as their own," Sonia said.

"Except it's worse," Marcus said. "Because art in a museum is acknowledged. These songs were carried in people's hearts for generations, and nobody ever wrote them down. They existed only because grandmothers like yours kept singing them."

Six people. Three generations. Three countries of origin. One problem.

"We can't sue him," Sonia said. "There's no copyright on traditional songs."

“Through participation in the educational process promoted by the training institute, they are motivated to reject the torpor and indifference inculcated by the forces of society and pursue, instead, patterns of action which prove life altering.” asked Fatou.

Sonia looked at her notebook. She had been reading about the Bahá'í principle of justice — how Bahá'u'lláh wrote that “The House of Justice does not wish to go beyond this at the present time. 3.” because through it, every person receives their due.

“Were one to judge with fairness, this suffering is worthy of gratitude, and these afflictions are naught but manifold bestowals.” Sonia said. "We document every song. We record the real history — who wrote it, who carried it, who it belongs to. And we make the real story louder than the fake one."

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The Heritage Music Project — as Sonia named it — took three months.

By the end, they had a collection of ninety-seven songs from twelve countries, each one documented with its history, its lineage, and the name of the community it belonged to.

Vince DiMarco's label quietly removed the songs from the streaming platforms.

He never apologized. He never acknowledged what he'd done. He just disappeared, the way people do when the spotlight of truth becomes too bright.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was Grandmère Celeste, sitting on her porch on a summer evening, playing "Ti Zwazo" on her accordion, while neighbors gathered on the sidewalk to listen. The song existed before Vince DiMarco and it would exist after him, because it lived in the hands and hearts and voices of the people who loved it.

"Sonia," Grandmère said after the last note faded into the Brooklyn evening. "Do you know what you did?"

"I built a website?"

"You gave our songs their names back."

THE END

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Crimson Ark Publishing creates mysteries about justice. The Disappearing Music is about what happens when culture is stolen — and what one kid does to give it back.