Some few improvements can be linked directly to the foreign military, such as improved garbage collection (where were the mosquitos?) and some expansion of health clinics and the like. But Haitian attitudes towards the occupation are anything but unanimous. Many appreciate it from a practical standpoint or simply because it was responsible for bringing back Aristide. Many despise it on a nationalist level. Many blame Aristide for caving into the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and their liberal economic policies, while others see Aristide as a victim in an American State Department game. Many people from all political orientations think that the occupation has provided too little too slowly in the way of tangible benefits. As I drove into the Sylvio Cator Stadium grounds to check out preparations for the festival, a convoy of U.N. soldiers had just arrived on a routine patrol around the city. The bewildered leader radioed into headquarters, "Do we know that there`s a big music festival about to happen here at the stadium?
 Are we supposed to be providing security for this thing?"
Waiting for an answer, the tanks and armored personnel carriers deployed around the festival grounds, and the soldiers took up defensive positions around the crews who were hastily erecting sound systems and painting sponsor´s logos on billboards ringing the stadium. One of those sponsors was the Ministry of Education and Culture, and this sponsorship proved most controversial. In Haiti, political divisions are deep and everything is interpreted in political terms (political affiliation can be a life-and-death matter at critical moments). The involvement of a government ministry made this concert, in the eyes of many, indelibly a Lavalas (Aristide political movement) event. Somehow or other, the contingent of soldiers cleared up the mystery of the festival, and by the start of the music, the military was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Interior Ministry security officers in friendly T-shirts had taken charge. One Ministry security guard, Hiliere Bernette Alexis, proudly showed off his former army i.d. badge, even as he spoke glowingly of the decision by Aristide to disband the Haitian army.
At least Hiliere has a job to replace his commission - lots of other former soldiers are not so lucky.
The most dramatic result of the festival was the glimpse it provided into how far the roots music movement in Haiti has progressed. Five years ago, maybe three or four groups (none with major commercial recording contracts) could have been scrambled for such a festival. In 1995, two days of continuous half-hours slots had to be tightly scheduled to give everyone a chance to perform. Mizik rasin (roots music) has become a rich musical vein that has produced international quality performers the likes of Boukman Eksperyans, Boukan Ginen3, Ram, Foula and Rara Machine (the latter being absent from the festival). Along with these groups were a number of groups with national (Haitian) renown that have had an impact at carnival but that seldom get the opportunity to perform at concert venues: Kanpèch, Koudyay4 and Wawa, for example. The first afternoon's concert began under a cloudy sky with the solo figure of Bob Bovano5 on stage playing his guitar, tossing his dreadlocks, and singing in a plaintive and raspy voice. Bovano, a Bob Marley look-alike who walks around with a parrot on his shoulder, cultivates an otherworldly and prophetic aura. After Bovano, Twoup Makandal, led by drummer Frizner Augustin, brought their Vodou-jazz and their folkloric dancers from New York featuring a number of North Americans in the troupe.
 Also from New York was the venerable diasporic dance troupe led by (and named for) Louinès Louinis. These diasporic groups sandwiched a group of drummers and singers named Rasin Kanga featuring percussionist and singer Wawa6. Wawa, best known abroad for a series of recordings on the Mini Records label in the 1980s called "Roots of Haiti, Vols. 1-5", led an resurgent performance career during the defakto years after the coup and was a popular figure at the carnivals of those years. Wawa and his troupe performed, among other pieces, the "Priye Ginen" or "African Prayer," helping to consecrate the festival.
The brilliant arranger Dernst Emile, who has a long history of producing roots recordings for haitian mini-djaz7 in the States, brought a new group to the festival that included bassist Ti-Nès of System Band and the very impressive vocalist Yannik Etienne. The music of Emile´s group, like that of Foula8, incorporates a sophisticated jazz sensibility to the performance of roots materials. Foreigners, too, were represented at the festival. The Swedish vodou-rock ensemble Simbi9 made its second trip to Haiti for the festival and were very well received, along with some non-Haitian members of Twoup Makandal and Dernst Emile´s group. The audience seemed to genuinely respect the efforts of the foreign musicians to learn and perform Haitian music.
The headliner for the weekend was a first-time visitor to Haiti, Celia Cruz, who gave a superb concert on Saturday night that included a Haitian song she introduced in the 1950s, "Gede Zareyen." Celia Cruz has been popular in Haiti all of these years and many in the audience of 4,000 plus knew her hits by heart. Of course, Celia´s consistent involvement in and popularization of Cuban santeria10 struck a responsive chord in a Haitian audience that came to see music inspired by santeria´s closest relative in the Caribbean, Haitian vodou. The intimate relations between African religions in the Americas governed the stage on Saturday night. Cruz was backed up by a Cuban band fronted by José "El Canario" Alberto in which her daughters also sang. El Canario and his group contribute a lively set of their own with a dash of Cuban showbiz glitz and polish, including the song "La Gitana" (The Gypsy).
At the end of her set, Celia Cruz introduced the Haitian singer most often compared to Celia, Martha Jean-Claude at 72 years of age. Jean-Claude, who left Haiti in 1954 for Cuba, was a respected singer of vodou-inspired meringues, and her long absence from Haiti (1954-86) rendered her an almost legendary figure in Haitian music. Jean-Claude's voice is somewhat harsh these days and she had to helped onto stage, but she warmed up to the material and the audience experienced a powerful echo of her earthiness, passion and grace. Her former singing partner, Emerante de Pradines Morse, who had introduced Martha to Haitian audiences at the Rex Theater in 1944, joined her on stage for a short set. The years have been kind to Emerante and she performed with a stunning vigor, so much so that the youthful competition between the two singers seemed to surface for a short period. They performed "Choucoune" and "Erzulie," two Haitian meringue chestnuts," in the two-part harmonies that characterized their short partnership in the 1940s, providing a connection for the audience to an earlier Haitian roots movement.In that movement dating from the 1940s, the government formed a Bureau of Ethnology to study Haitian traditional culture, Lina Blanchet and her students organized folkloric dance toupes, the bands Jazz des Jeunes and Orchestre Issah el Sieh played vodou-influenced meringues in a style called voodoo-jazz, and Haitian "primitive" painters were discovered by an international art market. The return of these two early giants of roots music along with the wonderful Celia Cruz marked an emotional, if not musical, high point of the festival.
Emerantes de Pradines Morse is the daughter of another significant musical figure, singer/songwriter Kandjo (Candio11, AKA Auguste Linstat de Pradines), who was the first to sing the Haitian national anthem and who composed many popular meringes; she is the mother of Richard Morse, the Haitian-American leader of Ram12. Appropriately, Ram followed her performance, and they were in the process of tearing down the house when torrential rains started to fall. Although many audience members took the rain for a blessing and opened their arms wide - and although the band was eager to continue - the organizers suspended the concert. As compenstion, Ram was allowed to perform again on Sunday night so as to climax with their popular 1995 carnival song. One of the highlights of the festival for me was witnessing how this ensemble has matured over the last couple of years. Richard´s voice sounds stronger and more assured, as does that of his wife Lunise, and the band expertly weaves elements drawn from rock, mizik vodou, and konpa. Ram also performed the song "Erzulie", a well-loved meringue that is itself a tribute to the deity of love and sensuality. Morse's mother popularized the song in the 1940s, but it was written by none other than Morse's grandfather, Kandjo, after his first visit to a Vodou ceremony at the turn of the century. Simbi-Yo (not to be confused with the Swedish Vodou-Rock band, Simbi) was a new band fronted by some veterans of the roots music scene, including Sanba13 Zao, who was one of the founders of the movement in the 1970s. Joining him in the band (but not on stage) is drummer Aboudja, a founder of Sanba-yo in the early 1980s (from the earlier group "Sa"). Dernst Emile, whose brother Dennis was also among the earliest exponents of the new roots movement) joined Zao in the group for a performance of "Djaye" referring to a kind of Vodou ceremonial trance.
The closest thing to a non-commercial "roots" performance was by the community rara14 band organized by members of Foula called Rara Vodoule. Massing on stage with over 30 players of bamboo vaksin-s15, tin trumpets, drums, rattles and banners, the group was essentially the same group that parades from the neighborhood above the cemetery in Port-au-Prince in rara season (same, that is, except for the coordinated costumes - a concession to the staged environment).
Sunday´s concert began to heat up with the appearance of the Haitian-American ragga artist, Papa Jube16 (Jube Altino), who is in the process of developing the Haitian traditional components (especially rara) in some of his songs. Jube´s communication with the audience was direct and charismatic and his delivery of songs like "Demokrasi" (Ring the bell, democracy is coming, adopted from Tenor Saw's song "Ring the Alarm") and "Anbago" (Embargo) provided some uplifting moments in the afternoon twilight
Joining Jube in representing the hip-hop movement in Haitian music was Haitian-American rap star Wyclef Jean, one third of the group the Fugees. Performing without his fello Fugees, Jean made an appearance at the festival out of solidarity with the musicians despite misgivings about the Vodou focus of the event (due to his strict Protestant upbring).
The finale of the festival was supposed to be back-to-back performances of Boukan Ginen and Boukman Eksperyans. Unfortunately, singer Eddy Francois of Boukan Ginen was unhappy to hear that they were performing before his former bandmates in Boukman Eksperyans. After a magnificient opening song ("Pale Pale") which had the audience eating out of his hand, Eddy stopped the music and began to complain to the audience about the pay, the scheduling and the sound, suggesting that the festival was trying to sabotage the band. He promptly turned and walked off the stage as the rest of the band tried to finish the song.
 Boukman Eksperyans, after their usual prayer session behind the stage, opened with a reverent choral chant and went on to deliver a riveting performance concluding with their 1990 carnival hit "Ké M Pa Sote." By this time, the festival organizers had let in everyone at the gate for free and over 10,000 people were enjoying the carnival ambience of the end of the festival. Boukman also played an invocation to Legba, the Vodou deity who guards the gates of ceremony and permits passage from the spiritual to the secular realm. It is fitting that Boukman sang "Legba, Open the Gates for Me," as thousands of eager Haitians poured through the gates to join the celebration.
GAGE AVERILL is professor of music and Latin American studies at New York University and was the Haitian music columnist for The Beat Magazine for eight years. We thankfully appreciate his authorization to reprint his (revised) article from The Beat Magazine and his kind cooperation to prepare this text. We also thank CCSmith, editor of The Beat Magazine for the authorization. You may subscribe this fine magazine under GETTHEBEAT@aol.com
Gage Averill has written many books and articles on the subject of which we recommend among others:
A Day for the Hunter, a Day form the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti. xxx, 276 p., 12 halftones, 2 line drawings. CSE 1997
The University of Chicago Press ISBN 022603291-4/2-2
(http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13233.ctl)
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Bouyon Rasin means a "roots soup"- the name chosen by Mapou Productions for their "first annual" festival of Haitian roots music held July 28-30,1995 in Port-au Prince, Haiti.