The sound of revolution could easily have the same rhythm it had two centuries ago; it could be heard as recently as January in the street music from the underreported general strike that began in Guadeloupe and spread to Martinique. Tie up the abusers Tie up the whites Tie (them) up (with) the action spirit Tie them up. This begs for a long answer, but consider this shortcut: Bob Marley and, with apologies to Carl Wilson, not Celine Dion. If you are trying to develop your vocabulary as a jazz improviser, you'll want to transcribe from other players, hopefully great jazz pl... "Boy, do I have a lot to learn!" The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. (Funny because the other night at a performance, our guide told that she was surprised th... Amanda "No Respect For Musicians" Palmer I realize that there is a lot going on: the Middle East is in flames, our Presidenti... Kansas City Lightning: The Rise And Times of Charl... Back in New York! We … Even more interesting, though, as you say, is the music of revolution: maroon armies were also said to move through space while surrounding themselves with big musical sound. The Haitian Revolution thwarted Napoleon and also ended the first form of New World slavery based on the Caribbean Sugar Islands shifting it to the Cotton fields of the American South. In trying to understand the music of Haiti, I find myself taking a transnational approach, because, as I keep arguing, the Haitian revolution was a generative explosion for the popular music of the hemisphere. As was the case two hundred years ago in Haiti, music and revolution are tightly intertwined, which makes sense, since one of the main tasks of Caribbean music has always been imagining the unimaginable. On Good Friday, one friend received two raras with rum and a little money. a song about the Haitian Revolution. Listening to them is like jamming your finger into a wall socket. I saw one group led by a man with a large Bob Marley flag. What, then, does that signal moment in the past—the Haitian revolution—sound like in the funky potpourri of rhythms that is contemporary Haitian music? To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then View saved stories. For example, in Leogane, a rara stronghold, there were banners for a rara competition/parade—a defile (as in “narrow passage requiring a single-file march”) of rara, as it was advertised. Music and singing were fundamentally important parts of the revolutionary experience. It was no secret if you understood the song: Bomba! In the mid-1980s, six new songs became rallying cries for independence. (Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon, or Collective Against Exploitation) demonstrators are parading to is what was known in different times and places as the habanera, tango, and bamboula. Bigga Haitian: T.M. And they did so in the midst of a thriving cultural life in the towns of Saint-Domingue (and later—after the revolution—in Haiti). The track called “Instrumental Isolations” gives the feeling of a rara band passing by, and the video “Musicians in an Artibonite Rara Walking” presents something similar. All the significant port towns had theatres with several performances every week, and in the largest, Le Cap, a theatre performed the works of Moliÿre and Voltaire, and several plays written locally in the Creole language, which brought together African and French grammar and vocabulary. All rights reserved. Music scholar Lynn Abbott once made an observation about Marley’s music that aptly applies to much Haitian music: “It reminds me of the Cajun Two-Step [dance style] that chugs merrily along while the guy is singing, ‘I’m condemned to walk down the big lonesome road for the rest of my days.’ ”) Yes, perhaps the revolution—or should I say Revolution?—will get lost in translation, but the sound of joyful defiance, that open secret, will prance right through. The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott. For a different stab at Laurent’s question that involves a uniquely Haitian style of music, I think immediately of the first two albums by Boukman Eksperyans—who Madison brought up in our first discussion—which come out of a tradition of direct political engagement in music (mizik angaje): “Vodou Adjaye” (released in the bicentennial year of the religious leader Boukman’s uprising at Bwa Kayiman, generally considered the start of the Haitian revolution) and “Kalfou Danjere” (Dangerous Crossroads, released after General Raoul Cedras’s September 30, 1991 coup against Aristide; the title song was the subversive hit of Haitian carnival in 1992). (I’m reminded of the many people who happily dance to Bob Marley’s lament “No Woman No Cry” and his protest “Get Up, Stand Up.” A welcome incongruity, if ever there was one. One of the remarkable things about the dancehall/reggaetón sound becoming a pan-Antillean and Caribbean style is that through timbre and rhythm it crosses the language divide that keeps adjacent territories from talking to each other now that their African languages have largely, though by no means entirely, vanished. Their costumes, which parallel those found in New Orleans, Haiti, and Trinidad, tell the story of slavery: participants are sometimes dressed as “Congos” just arrived from Africa, covered in dark black grease, or else dressed as maroons, runaway slaves, as Akiyo is in a January 2009 procession. Their processions are led by a line of marchers striking long whips against the streets, which sends out a sharp, stunning crack (as you can see Voukoum doing here). Rara still lends itself to the feeling of rebellion. “When I was a kid, it struck me that the rara was always demanding respect, both with its loudness and active recruitment as it went along.”. There are places today where you can connect the dots by listening. Thankfully, Haitian musicians possess a canny pop sensibility: they see no trade-off between being political heralds and pleasing a crowd. In eastern Cuba, a zone with a deep revolutionary culture that derives in no small part from nearby Saint-Domingue/Haiti, I have seen performances by three of these societies, called in Cuba tumba francesa—one in Santiago de Cuba, one in Guantánamo, and a rural one in the foothills of the Sierra Cristal (whose existence was only discovered by anthropologists in 1976). Bomba, hen! It’s no surprise, then, that Vodou Adjeye opens with “Se Kreyol Nou Ye” (“We’re Creole”), which criticizes Haitians who “would rather speak French, English, or Spanish rather than Creole.” The musicians declare “We’re Creole—we’ll never be ashamed of it” … “we’re people of the Kongo, let’s not be ashamed of it” and the galloping Vodou rhythms convince you they mean it. (This is not only good musical sense—it’s common sense: explicit criticism of corrupt powers in Haiti has often invited a beating or worse.) The Haitian state remained little more than an army and a tax-collecting system, while the US occupation and successive dictatorships gave ordinary Haitians few opportunities to take control of their own destinies in the way French Canadians did in Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s (which led to provincial autonomy and strong protection for the French language, among other things). What is powerful about these groups is that they really highlight the complicated politics of culture, and culture of politics, in the French Antilles. The bomba group Alma Moyó has in its repertoire a dance—a duet between a drummer sitting on top of his turned-over drum and the steps of a male solo dancer festooned with kerchiefs—that is almost identical to a tumba francesa dance called frenté. It was the right-hand rhythm of Dominguan-descended Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Bamboula” in 1848; it’s the invariable underlying rhythm of reggaetón; and it’s the rhythm underpinning the Guadeloupean demonstrators. In the 1600s, Haiti (Saint Domingue) came under French rule. The nationalist movements that developed there starting in the nineteen-sixties never rallied large majorities in favor of independence from France. The music is infectious not merely because of catchy rhythms but also because satire (“pwen,” anyone?) In Guadeloupe the two most famous groups, representing the two sides of the island, are Akiyo and Voukoum, each of them linked in important ways to the politics of protest and cultural revival. This movement, in turn, surrounded and in some ways sustained union activism and other political protest on the island, helping to lay the foundation for the strike that took place in Guadeloupe earlier this year. The now mythic ceremony of Bwa Kayiman that is supposed to have initiated the first stage of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 serves as a sort of gravitational center for thinking about both Haiti and religion in Haiti.And yet, the connection between religion and revolution is most often underdeveloped in at least two ways. Jazz Melodica: Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me? The scholar Robert Farris Thompson identifies it as the Kongo mbila a makinu, “the call to the dance,” and it was known in Arabic music. I'm back in New York for the summer! Ad Choices. Mr. Sublette, I am interested to know more about how Haitian music reflected popular feelings for or against the 1990 coup and if it was a powerful force in mobilizing political power like it did during the Haitian Revolution. In Haiti, on May 18th, Flag Day, there were many people out doing rara, bringing that tradition further into the national celebration. (Those who want to explore further should pick up Gage Averill’s essential “A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti.”) There’s still nothing like the music generated by the rasin bands in that early-nineties moment of dangerous crossroads in Haiti—Boukan Ginen, RAM, Zobop, Kanpech, to name some that I recall from that time. Having the rara stop by is an honor, and to turn it away is an insult. It sent populations up and down the Atlantic coast and the Antilles—and ultimately to New Orleans, where many families from Saint-Domingue were reunited….I would add the vocal legacy of the military drill, which evolved into the gruff vocal style of dancehall reggae. Two Haitian Creole songs, the Priyè Deyò ("Outside Prayers"), may then be sung, lasting from 45 minutes to an hour. A few observations, then, that might echo some of what’s already been said: It seems there is a lot more effort being made now to “organize” the rara in some way. In 1793, competing factions battled for control of the then-capital of St. Domingue, Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien.) I was in Haiti and then in Guadeloupe in late May and saw much of what we have been discussing in motion. Drawing on the energy of rara, this style of music called mizik rasin (roots) was built on culturally oriented, politically charged lyrics, choral chants, trance-inducing vodou drumming over a drum-machine pulse, and psychedelic lead guitar. These are formally constituted clubs of older people who dance in costumes that reference eighteenth-century ball attire, the women’s heads wrapped in the tignons that women of color were required by law to wear. Song" as the background music. I was in Haiti with my family for Easter, in the middle of rara season, and we spent a week in Jacmel with friends. Three months ago, I posted a roundtable discussion, the street music from the underreported general strike, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti. When I was a kid, it struck me that the rara was always demanding respect, both with its loudness and active recruitment as it went along. Amateurs and formally trained composers alike produced thousands of songs and hymns to celebrate or criticize the Revolution. [249] The revolution kicks off with such strength and ferocity, the French leaders in charge couldn't believe that slaves had planned and executed the revolt. Their ideas and … Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment. Read as many books as you like (Personal use) and Join Over 150.000 Happy Readers. The launching of the Haitian revolution, after all, was a Vodou ceremony, so music quite literally opened the way. Rara is so unbelievably rich that I could go on forever, so I’d better sign off. What does revolution sound like? The adoption of this vocal style throughout the Antilles echoes the universality of the quadrille in the same territories two centuries ago, when a commandeur barked out the dance steps. The main lwa are then saluted, individually, in a specific order. C… The launching of the Haitian revolution, after all, was a Vodou ceremony, so music quite literally opened the way. By Lenny Lowe. A maroon leader in the Port-au-Prince region named Halou, headed an army of two thousand maroons, whose leader “marched preceded by the music of drums, lambis [conch shells], trumpets and sorcerers…”. The Sound of Revolution. Rara, like revolution, can be so deceiving, in that it might sometimes seem rather disorganized, but is highly organized—rara mimicking, as some have said, a military structure that might have served quite well in revolutionary battles. Haiti became an independent country after a series of conflicts known as the Haitian Revolution. Have your students dig deeper into Toussaint L'Ouverture's leadership of the Haitian Revolution with this close reading and primary source analysis document set.In these two primary source documents, students will examine and answer higher order thinking questions to learn more about the Haitian Rev They tie their messages of resistance to catchy riffs and vibrant rhythms, producing ambidextrous music that presses the consciousness while shaking the hips and feet. So this is the music of warfare. anthem, “Gwadloup sé tan nou” (“Guadeloupe is ours”) demonstrates a politicized use of the dancehall/reggaetón style, by now firmly entrenched as the timbre and rhythm of a pan-Antillean sensibility. The Haitian revolution came to North American shores in the form of a refugee crisis. Most people who know me know me as a jazz pianist. Raymond Gama, a historian who is a spokesman for the L.K.P., explained to me that though it was unclear what the next steps of the movement should be, or even what the specific goals should be for Guadeloupe, they felt that their victory was in mobilizing people, in showing them what might be possible in the future if they continue. The slave trade to the colony of Saint-Domingue in the late eighteenth century brought forty thousand people a year from different parts of Africa, and these different groups met up on plantations and in towns, exchanging ideas, confronting their new situation, and creating new music, religion, and language. Then, by late afternoon, they’ll “call out” local corruption, singing what little they can about politics in cryptic, poetic songs, often recycled for generations to fit the present crisis (and unfortunately there’s usually a crisis). The boats are populated by people whose heads are Kongo crosses, and one contains the goddess Ezili captured by American Coast Guard officers who look at once stern and a little fragile. From Histoire de Napoléon, by M. De Norvins, 1839. Hey there, Jazz Fans! Rara creates a sonic signifier of Haitianness like no other, because of the distinctive bamboo horns that are played by hocketing (one player on one note, with everyone playing on rhythm to get a melody going). Akiyo’s anthem retells the history of abolition, declaring that it was not truly the French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher who freed the slaves, but rather the maroons who fought for liberty for generations. I often think of Haitian music as a kind of remarkable archive, one that keeps traces of the process of deportation, slavery, and revolution that created the nation. [1] The success of the Haitian Revolution shook the institution of slavery throughout the New World. Three months ago, I posted a roundtable discussion of Haitian music among several remarkable scholars and writers. In early 1790, Vincent Ogé, a charismatic black revolutionary from Paris, sailed to the French Carribean territory of Saint-Domingue with one aim: to stoke a rebellion that would “overturn the Colony and obtain complete equality between the people of Color and the whites.” Last year around Easter I had the remarkable experience of going on a gagá (the Dominican equivalent of rara) out in the country in the Dominican Republic on Jueves Santo (Holy Thursday) and then going on a second line in New Orleans the following Sunday. Their songs may be infused with the memory of the revolution, they may make renewed challenges to power, they may weigh in on the heavy matters of the moment—but Haitian musicians never forget that they are entertainers. [249] Legba always comes first, as he is believed to open the way for the others. It lives in the lyricism and message of the poems of Langston Hughes, and vibrates today through the music of Leyla McCalla whose own history resides in Haiti even as she plucks the strings of her cello in the present. Due to Haitian nationality laws, dual citizenship is now permitted by the Constitution of Haiti, therefore people of Haitian ancestry born outside of the country are not included in this list, unless they have renounced their foreign citizenship or have resided extensively in Haiti and made significant contributions to Haitian government or society. (One of the sponsors of the group over the past years has been the now-retired soccer star Lilian Thuram, long a pillar of the French national football team, who was born and grew up in Anse-Bertrand, Guadeloupe.) It’s not a coincidence that bomba is the name of the folkloric Afro-Puerto Rican musical form. Photograph by Ned Sublette. Recently, a rara band from Brooklyn called DjaRara played on the Mall after Obama’s inauguration. Edwidge, you could be describing a second line in New Orleans, which I am convinced owes much to the rara. True enough, but Laurent, if I haven’t misunderstood you, you are not so much asking about revolution—dramatic, wide-reaching change—as you are reaching back to Revolution—political revolt that ushers in a new social order.) We were at a nighttime dance driven by gwo-ka drumming, and with an illuminated grin he announced: “Nous sommes déjà demain!”—“We are already tomorrow!”. (Exciting news: Lomax’s recordings and films from his 1936-37 trip to Haiti—the first extensive field recordings there—are about to come out in a big set to be called “The Haiti Box.”). In 1807, the British Parliament abolished Slavery, and the rest of the World Powers in time followed suit. Ready to carry out their plans, the slaves meet in Morne-Rouge to make final preparations and to give instructions. One rara had four generations of women from the same lakou, the oldest a very lithe ninety-plus-year-old woman. Bois-Caiman and After: the Haitian Revolution. hen! This meeting was the result of months of strategizing and planning by enslaved people in the northern area of the colony who were recognized as leaders of their respective plantations. And in Guadeloupe I was able to attend several events organized by the L.K.P., the coalition of groups that organized the strikes earlier this year. This in turn cracks open a mystery: what one component—and not an unimportant one—of Congo Square sounded like. The transnational flow of culture: a gagá in the Dominican Republic, on Holy Thursday, 2008. eh! And in “Nou Pap Sa Bliye” (“We Won’t Forget This”) they come to the defense of Vodou: “They’re saying that it’s werewolf music/But we know that it’s a lie.” But so what if you don’t understand Creole? Songs of the Revolution. You can get a feel for parading rara music on this Web site. If I want to forgo the pop-music instrumentation and just go into the drum, which is where I most like to be, I go to Azor. (This, in part, explains why some rara songs and parades are so ribald.) ‎Abstract The focus of this article is a critical look at the epistemological treatment of the Haitian Revolution by progressive 20th-century scholars such as C.L.R. Most obviously, in 1791 the Haitian Revolution began. It’s a bámbula (which in New Orleans was known as bamboula). All levity aside, the Haitian Revolution was no joke; considered the most successful rebellion in history, it culminated in driving out the French and appointing governor-general, In the fake "Uprize" movie within a movie, the Allen character plays Dutty Boukman ( which I hate to say but it sounds like somebody from the Pootie Tang bits from the Chris Rock Show......never mind, I'll be quiet...) who was a voodoo priest and leader of the Maroon slaves. Toussaint Louverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution. It sent populations up and down the Atlantic coast and the Antilles—and ultimately to New Orleans, where many families from Saint-Domingue were reunited. Kanaval celebrates the origins, history and influence of Haitian culture, and features interviews and music from Boukman Eksperyans, Paul Beaubrun, RAM, Lakou Mizik, Chico Boyer, Win Butler & Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes, Ben Jaffe of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and others. I’m glad Ned brought us to Guadeloupe, and to the ongoing link between song and revolution, since it’s on that island that I’ve most often had the pleasure of participating in the pan-Caribbean tradition of street music we’ve been talking about. You often pay, or at least play nice, to get through. His military genius and political acumen led to the establishment of the independent black state of Haiti, transforming an entire society of slaves into a free, self-governing people. The Haitian Revolution is considered to have begun officially on Aug. 14, 1791, with the Bois Caïman ceremony, a Vodou ritual presided over by Boukman, a maroon leader and Vodou priest from Jamaica. Hey, hey, secret! Throughout the documentary, historical insights and interviews are provided … In various parts of the Antilles there are choreographic societies that go to great lengths to perform a memory of the moment of truth of more than two hundred years ago: the last days of plantation slavery in the French Caribbean. Moreau de St. Méry describes something similar to the tumba francesa in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue, though he saw it as the comically inept imitation of the master’s dances by domestic servants. Rara parades are catching on in the Haitian diaspora, too; they’ve been used in celebrations as well as protests in Miami, New York, and Boston. Last year, researching the history of music in Haiti, I came across a description of a big dinner organized on a plantation a decade before the Haitian Revolution. Haitian voodoo religion originates in Africa and uses mystical dance and music ceremonies where spirit possession is involved. The huge profits of the slave trade gave the French bourgeiosie economic power and the confidence to challenge a bungling and rapacious feudal taxation system under Louis XVI. It’s the Antillean beat, bouncing around for three hundred years or more. Much as the artistic "Great Awakening" of the 1860s kindled a passion for national independence, the “Great Reawakening” of the 1980s helped crystallize a desire for freedom from Soviet rule. A lot of this can be found in Liza’s book, but it was wonderful to be reminded that while Haitian music, including rara, can be used in revolution and protest, it can also be used in community building. the untranslated text of an anthem from Saint-Domingue—a text corroborated elsewhere, and, more remarkably, which Moreau was able to transcribe without knowing the language (not French, and, very interestingly, not Creole either, but Kikongo), possibly from having heard it repeated many times: Eh! Like the whips that are part of many Vodou ceremonies in Haiti, they are both a potent reminder of slavery and also a curious appropriation of slavery’s ultimate symbol for a radically different purpose, that of calling down the lwa or of opening the way for the music. In musical terms, dotted quarter, eighth, quarter, quarter: BOOMP, da DOM DOM. Happily, they have returned to discuss revolution, “rara,” and other intersections of Haitian politics, daily life, and music. At the time Haiti was ruled by France as a colony.The vast majority of the colony’s people were Black Africans who were enslaved by the French. It feels exhilarating to go out with them and dance for miles through public space in the relative cool of the Haitian night, dancing behind waves of drummers, horn players, percussionists, and singers, with children and market women trailing behind, selling sweets from baskets on their heads.