Christian Craan
• Age: 48.• Hometown: Port-au-Prince, Haiti.• Education: Forest Lake Academy, Florida; UTC (1991).• Son: Elijah, 20.• Vocation: Bass player with Milele Roots.Favorites• Movie: “Delicatessen.”• Actor: Clint Eastwood.• Book: “Candide.”• Opera: “Carmen.”• Song: “Now That We Found Love” by Third World.• Quote: “By deporting me, you have cut down the tree of our liberty, but it will grow back because our roots are deep and numerous.”– Toussaint Louverture.
Growing up in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Christian Craan believed it was his destiny to be a businessman. His family ran a school that taught secretarial and bookkeeping skills, so he thought he would naturally land in that vocation.
Then he heard Bob Marley’s “Rastaman Vibration.” Craan was 12 and didn’t speak English, but the beat drew him in. It would be years later before reggae music fully took over his life, but the seed had been set.
Craan moved to Florida to attend high school in the early 1980s. He learned English and enrolled in the business school at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 1984. A few years later, he bought a bass guitar at a pawn shop just to pass the time, but eventually he started playing with some fellow students and friends. That led to the creation of a reggae group called Irie Nation.
Today, Craan is the bass player for Milele Roots, a locally based reggae band that plays regularly around the Southeast.