Tag Archives | Haiti

Haitian Rara Music — Bring your Vaksen the Rara

Haitian rara music is literally music of the street. And in rara, a vaksen is your friend.

Rara bands wielding drums, maracas and multiple hand percussion instruments take to the streets of Haiti in raucous public processions. These street celebrations are most prevalent during Easter week, but they also pop up during political campaigns to inspire enthusiasm for candidates. The vaksen is a long, cylindrical tube, a rousing, brazen trumpet . Whether you make your vaksen out of bamboo, as is tradition, or metal, or anything else, the most important thing is that your Haitian rara music is exuberant noise. Let the band in this video show you how.

The Frog is Hopping Hopping Hopping Krapo Tingele

“Krapo Tingele” is a Haitian folk song about a frog — a toad, actually, a “krapo” — and a horse who are in love with the same girl…of course!

And, doubly of course, they race to determine who can court her. In the All Around This World version the frog and horse actually try to one-up each other by attempting the other’s task; the horse tries to run, the frog tries to hop. What happens? Hilarity ensues. (Of course!)

Boukman Eksperyans takes us back to our Roots

Boukman Eksperyans is a Haitian “mizik rasin” (“roots music”) band that formed in the late ’70s when Lolo Beaubrun and his wife Mimerose joined a Haitian spiritual community (a “vodou lakou-s”) and founded a vodou-music study group called Moun Ife (“People of the Abode of the Deities”).

The band’s lyrics detailed the harsh living conditions in Haiti and called out the Haitian powers-that-be; its members fled the nation after the 1991 military coup overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide and lived in exile for many years. The name “Boukman” references Dutty Boukman, a Haitian vodou priest who is generally agreed to have started the Haitian revolution in 1791, and “Eksperyans” refers to the “Jimi Hendrix Experience.” This video gives us a good sense of both, and should definitely inspire us to want to learn more about Haitian music.

Haiti Will Survive

This week in our online class we will visit proud and resilient Haiti, a small country in the Caribbean with a rebellious streak and a terribly troubled past. This small former Spanish and then French colony, which shares an island called Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, has a challenging history full of colonial manipulation, inspiring independence following an unprecedented slave rebellion (1791-1804), devastating environmental catastrophes, deep political failure, and, through it all, the ability of a resilient people to survive.

Loi Loo Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo…FREEZE!

We don’t need complicated lyrics to feel great singing this Caribbean. “Loi loo” isn’t a song on its own but a phrase of “vocables” — syllables that don’t have any defined meaning — tucked into one of the many songs on the extraordinary box set, Alan Lomax in Haiti.. We share our version in this video, and add a special bonus introduction to Haiti’s ancestry day. Now FREEZE!

We visit Haiti and SING

Enjoy this week’s live class! If you want to join the fun, check out the livecast class schedule and contact me to be “in the room” on Zoom. If you can’t make it to Zoom, watch live classes, or watch anytime, on All Around This World’s facebook page. This week in class we sang “We Are Happy,” “Petit Oiseau,” “Krapo Tingele,” “Angelique O” and “M’sieu Michel,” and elected our kids president of Haiti with Haitian rara.

Haiti’s Traditional Troubatours

In the early 20th century Haitian musicians developed a tradition of Haitaian twobadou (troubadour) music, which was a personal, folksy style of narrative music, like American blues or Cuban son.

Traditionally Haitian twobadou performers traveled from township to township, singing songs that blended themes of contemporary social issues with twisting tales of love. Though today you’ll most likely find a twobadou band at a restaurant or tourist hotel. Like most music of Haiti — and as you’ll see in this video — the music is endearing, resonant and real.

The Compas of Tabou Combo

Tabou Cambo is one of our favorite Haitian bands, especially because it brings us Compas. By the 1950s Haitian band leader Nemours Jean-Baptiste had pioneered “Compas,” a style that wedded Haitian folk music with merengue rhythms, African percussion and American big band jazz. As The New York Times explains it: “Compas, Haiti’s pop music, is a mass of rhythmic complication, in which syncopations are accented and pass for downbeats, and rhythms interlock and repeat, all for the benefit of dancers.” In this video from 1984 we see the dynamic Tabou Combo perform live.