Haiti-born Canadian singer and French film star Luck Mervil may be in town promoting the free, weeklong Haitian Film Festival, but that didn't stop him from getting into the groove Thursday at North Miami's Nuvo Kafe spoken-word night. Inspired by the poetic verses of the young Haitian Americans, Mervil got into the flow by performing L'Homme de couleur by the great Senegalese poet and ...

... statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor.

''He is one of the greatest black poets,'' said Mervil, whose acting credits include the musical Les Misérables.

Mervil didn't just recite poetry. Though fans paid $50 to hear him sing Friday night at the Tower Theater in a benefit for the Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance and the film festival, the Nuvo Kafe crowd got to hear him for free. After grabbing his guitar from the car, Mervil turned in an emotional performance of his socially conscious Creole-language tunes, Ti-Marie and Mezami. Both songs touch on the social ills plaguing his native Haiti.

''Most of the Haitian community here in Miami and abroad know me as a singer,'' said Mervil, who hung out at Nuvo Kafe with Haitian filmmaker Laurence Magloire. ``I am an activist.''

While one of the films he stars in, Le Gout Des Jeunes Filles, is being shown during the festival, Mervil said he has a bigger reason for participating: to promote Haiti's burgeoning film industry and Haitian filmmakers like Magloire.

''We need to be known. People need to see who we are, what our culture is about. The only way to do it is in a universal way through art and culture,'' he said. ``They don't need to understand Creole to see us. We are not just about a country that is not going well right now, that is in chaos.''

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