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BEYOND
Haiti Lives
Music was the first responder.
The earliest credible information
I received out of Haiti
in the hours after the earthquake
was a series of tweets
from Port-au-Prince bandleader
Richard Morse. “Much
singing and praying in large
numbers,” he texted. Then
came the sad spectacle of
mainstream media floundering
to interpret the tragedy in the absence
of any knowledge of Haiti’s history and culture,
to say nothing of the near-total
absence of an identifiably Haitian music
style in the grim, doggedly earnest “Hope
For Haiti” telethon. Haitian music history
became more knowable recently with the
release of Alan Lomax In Haiti (Harte
Recordings 103; 10 CDs; AAAA).
This massive set is beyond entertainment.
These never-before-available recordings are
the beginning of Haitian music history. To
make them, folklorists Alan and Elizabeth
Lomax lugged 155 pounds of gear on a boat
to Haiti in 1936. They stayed from Christmas
to Easter, documenting seasonal celebrations
(at a time when vodou was in theory
banned, by Haitian law), setting up recording
sessions, even getting married there.
Alan Lomax also shot dance footage with a
silent film camera.
Pre-revolutionary 18th century Haiti
(known as Saint-Domingue) had the densest
concentration of Africans ever assembled
on a piece of ground up to that point.
At the time of Boukman’s uprising in 1791,
two-thirds of the half a million slaves in the
rich plantation colony had been born in
Africa. Urbanites, farmers from the forest,
professional soldiers, ritual experts—people
from disparate African cultural regions
were compressed together in labor camps,
then exploded as a concomitant part of the
French Revolution. Haiti was the country
that rose up and killed slavery, singing as it
did so. With the full power of Africa flowing
through it, the Haitian uprising became one
of the generative explosions of popular
music in the hemisphere, dispersing an
original cultural synthesis that was complex,
specific and highly artistic.
Unfortunately, the sound of the aluminum
discs Lomax recorded was so horrible
that they were pretty much unlistenable
until the age of digital cleanup. So zero stars
for the audio, but five stars that it exists at
all and five more for Steve Rosenthal’s
painstaking restoration work. This isn’t
60 DOWNBEAT April 2010
by Ned Sublette
exactly fun listening; it’s grating when the
harshly tuned rustic voices distort, and
since much of the music is repetitive, that
can be jarring at length. But this is more
than fun, and discoveries lurk.
Adding significant value to the package
is an 85-page book with Gage Averill’s
detailed notes, which constitute a truly
impressive scholarly achievement and do
much to make the music comprehensible.
Hard-to-hear song texts are rendered the
right way, in full Kreyol/English bilingual
form. After listening to all 10 discs’ worth
of music on headphones, Averill’s book
became an indispensable organizing aid.
A handsome book of Lomax’s notes and
field drawings further augment the package’s
value.
The wide range of Haitian music that
Lomax documented is arrayed into 10 thematic
discs that include Haitian jazz bands
of the ’30s, Cuban-influenced troubadours,
Mardi Gras music, French romance (since
disappeared), colonial contredanse and
bawdy work songs. Needless to say, there
is also the energy of vodou, whether in duet
songs of the Rada branch with ason (rattle)
and klòch (a small, sweet bell) or with the
spirit heating up as Kongo/Petwo drummers
push the envelope in drumtongue,
still exhorting the spirits that more than two
centuries ago spoke in flames.
There is ample continuity between these
voices of more than 70 years ago and the
present day. Thank God (Bondye, if you’re
Haitian) they were made, and thank Anna
Lomax Wood for her determination to
make her father’s scholarship come to
fruition. It’s newly available primary source
material that has heretofore been inaccessible,
even to scholars, and is now instantly
essential.
Donations to help send material aid to
young Cuban-trained Haitian physicians on
the front lines in public hospitals and clinics
alongside the Cuban medical team in Haiti
can be made at medicc.org/ns/. DB
Ordering info: harterecordings.com
HARTE RECORDINGS
Paul Motian
Trio 2000 +Two
On Broadway, Vol. 5
WINTER & WINTER 910 148
AAAA
The musicians have changed on the handful of
On Broadway releases Paul Motian has
recorded since 1988, but the music has largely
stayed the same. Anyone working with the
master drummer and improviser can’t help but
be drawn into his lazy, hazy orbit.
As Motian massages the kit—cymbals
playing irregular, at times humorous beats, his
drums similarly dancing and darting (and
occasionally dumping) in truly unique fashion—the
musicians must conform to his flagrant
non-conformity. Here, it’s flow with the
flow, or be damned. Vol. 5 of the series focuses
on classic ballad material from Sammy
Fain, Frank Loesser, Lionel Hampton and others,
though you would never know that purely
by listening. The melodies are sometimes
unrecognizable, but it doesn’t matter. This is
the unfettered spirit of loose limbed, if abstract
bop: timeless, rambunctious, adventurous and
in the moment. Motian’s musicians play gorgeously,
especially pianist Masabumi Kikuchi
on “Something I Dreamed Last Night,” and
saxophonist Loren Stillman on “Just A
Gigolo,” but your ear always returns to the
unusual, playful drumming that glues it all
altogether.
Motian invents then gets away with things
that no other drummer would attempt, much
less pull off. It’s not that he makes his pitterpatter,
Marcel Duchamp-like rhythms simply
work; he’s got nothing to lose and, more
importantly, nothing to prove. Motian’s drumming
is ego-free, childlike and the very
essence of swing, melody and rhythm. He’s
irresistible. —Ken Micallef
On Broadway, Vol. 5: Morrock, Something I Dreamed Last
Night, Just A Gigolo, I See Your Face Before Me, A Lovely Way
To Spend An Evening, Midnight Sun, Sue Me. (56:18)
Personnel: Paul Motian, drums; Thomas Morgan, bass; Loren
Stillman, Michael Attias, saxophones; Masabumi Kikuchi, piano.
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Ordering info: winterandwinter.com