Jean: I met a kid named Emmanuel who wasn't even seven years old, yet he was already addicted to marijuana and alcohol. I got Emmanuel into a group home. He has the gift of memory and has been rapping since five. He's a straight-A student now. Emmanuel is an example of what can happen if you don't give up. I see him as a future leader.

CNT: How can you rebuild tourism?

Jean: Haiti needs another airport so people can fly to Jacmel or Turtle Island. And Haitians in the diaspora need to stop talking bad about their country. No matter what was going on in Jamaica, its people always had a phrase, "Everything is irie [all right]"—so the tourists would keep coming.

CNT: How can you persuade travelers that Haiti is safe when there were recently food riots?

Jean: If you hear food riot, if you hear guns, it's only coming from Port-au-Prince.

CNT: What makes Haiti so special?

Jean: All the other Caribbean islands are great, but they have been commercialized. Haiti is the only place you can go in the Caribbean and still feel the raw Africanness.

CNT: Should luxury travelers feel guilty in a poor country like Haiti?

Jean: They should feel good about giving back. Every time they go to a resort, the resort pays a tax and that contributes to rebuilding the nation. We're talking about tourism helping to create a labor force.

CNT: Has travel affected your work?

Jean: For a musician, everything is imagination. At the top of my career, I hadn't traveled. But my albums sounded like a world traveler's. My nickname when I was little was Ticket because I was always imagining I was going somewhere. People thought I had a mental problem. They would say, "Where did you just come from?" and I'd say, "En-gland." "Dog, you ain't ever been to England." I did go, in my mind.

For Jean's favorite music, visit our Boom Box blog (cntraveler.com/daily).