A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti / Gage Averill
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This Page Intentionally Left Blank A DAY FOR THE HUNTER CHICAGO STUDIES IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY A Series Edited by Philip V Bohlrnan and Bruno Nett1 EDITORIAL BOARD Margaret J. Kartomi Hiromi Lorraine Sakata Anthony Seeger Kay Kaufman Shelemay Bonnie C. Wade A DAY FOR THE HUNTER Popular Music and Power in Haiti GAGE AVERILL The University of Chicago Press *:* Chicago and London Gage Averill is associate professor of music and Latin American studies at Wesleyan University and was the Haitian music columnist for The Beat Mag- azine for eight years. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 0 1997 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1997 Printed in the United States of America 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN: 0-226-032914 (cloth) ISBN: 0-226-03292-2 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Averill, Gage. A day for the hunter, a day for the prey: popular music and power in Haiti / Gage Averill. p. cm.-(Chicago studies in ethnomusicology) Includes discography (p. 255), bibliographical references (p. 245), and index. ISBN 0-226-03291-4 (Cloth)-ISBN: 0-226- 03292-2 (pbk.) 1. Popular music-Haiti-20th century- History and criticism. 2. Power (Social sciences)-Haiti-History-2Oth century. I. Title. 11. Series. ML3486.H3A94 1997 78 1.63'097294-dc20 96-34209 CIP MN @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Na- tional Standard for Information Sciences-per- manence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984. To my wife, Giovanna Maria Perot-Averill This Page Intentionally Left Blank E, E! Ala yon ti peyi dwol o Hey, hey! What a strange country Chak fwa yo panse n koule Every time they think we’re running Yo we n remonte They see us get up again Yon jou pou chask A day for the hunter Yon jou pou jibye A day for the prey BOUKMAN EKSPERYANS “GANGA,” 1995 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xxv A Note on Translation xxix 1 Introduction: “A Message to Pass from Mouth to Mouth 1 2 “Living from Their Own Garden”:The Discourse of Authenticity 32 3 “Konpa-diriik for Life”: FranGois Duvalier’s Dictatorship and Konpa-dirkk 71 4 “Musicians Are a Single Family”: Critical Discourse in Music under Baby Doc Duvalier 108 5 “Watch Out for Them!”:Dechoukuj and Its Aftermath 161 Epilogue: “Carnival of Hope” 208 Notes 213 Glossary 237 Bibliography 245 Discography 255 Interviews 259 Index 26 1 Photos following page 160 This Page Intentionally Left Blank Preface This is a book about music and power, or more exactly about music in the discourse and relations of power. I contend that Haitian politics and more generally the struggle for power have insinuated themselves into every arena of musical expression. Popular music, as a discursive terrain, is a site at which power is enacted, acknowledged, accommo- dated, signified, contested, and resisted. Emerging in the context of power relations, popular music bears the traces of those relations. A popular Haitian aphorism has it that Ayiti se te glise (Haiti is a slippery country), and this is nowhere truer than in the convoluted landscape of Haitian politics. What I attempt in these pages is to communicate some of the subtle and complex interactions of music and power in Haiti and to point in some possibly productive directions for under- standing why they are so often yoked together. Encounters in Music and Power My perspectives on Haitian popular music have developed through eight years of interactions, conversations, observations, and readings, and my account of music and power in Haiti reflects those experiences. To clarify the contingent and subjective nature of my knowledge about these issues, let me begin by recounting a few brief anecdotes culled from my field notes and embellished with “head notes” (memories). On my first night in Haiti in 1988, unable to locate my contact and having lost all of my luggage (sent to Suriname by mistake), I checked into a hotel and wandered into a nearby bar. There I met two American xi xii Preface women who were working for a U.S. AID (U.S. Agency for Interna- tional Development) reforestation project in the south of Haiti, and we started drinking beer and talking. They were concerned that peasants in their area, even those working for the project, seemed disillusioned with-and resistant to-the project. The peasants were engaging in sabotage, “poaching“ of trees for charcoal, work slowdowns, spreading of rumors, and a variety of other tactics that the peasants called mawo- naj. I was surprised by the peasants’ adaptation of this term, which I knew only in relation to its original meaning: escape from slavery. Its use as a rubric for a class of tactics of resistance and subterfuge suggested a reinterpretation of the term over the course of a history of resistance to agents of oppression (whether foreign or national) against whom outright warfare was impossible. The AID workers also divulged that area ram bands were singing disparaging songs about the project and this was undermining their credibility.’ Ram is a pro- cessional music of peasants and the lower classes in Haiti, and because it was the beginning of ram season (roughly Lent), the bands could be heard at night just about anywhere in the country, including in the hills around us that night in PCtion-Ville. Outside, we heard a commo- tion, so we walked out into the street to find a small crowd pointing toward the horizon. Far off in the distance, north of Port-au-Prince, a very large building was burning, its flames visible from Petion-Ville. It was Damien, the Agricultural Ministry and College, and tonight it was the target of mawonaj. We watched the fire rage on for some time while rara bands, their bamboo trumpets sounding like a chorus of owls in the hillsides, filled the night with sound. As we shall see, the arts of musical mawonaj figure prominently in this book. It was a surprisingly long drive from Cap-Haitien, the northern provin- cial capital, to the town of Bas-Limbe. Picking up four hitchhikers, who rode on our rental car’s bumper, we bounced in near-total dark- ness down the dirt road leading from National Route 1 into Bas- LimbC, site of a fet chanpet (countryside festival) and host that night to one of Cap Hai’tien’stwo venerable orchestras, Orchestre Septentrio- nale. This was in the middle of August, the month of vakans (vacation time), when towns all over Haiti hold fbt chanpbts and fet patwonals (patron? day festivals). Septentrionale had just recorded a song at the time about this kind of event called “Plezi chanpPt” (Pleasures of the country festival). It beautifully illustrates the pleasures to be found in a chanpbt, the importance of the festival, and the money that it brings from the city to the countryside. ... Preface Xlll Sa k lot bo ap rantre, sa k isit ap Expatriates are returning, locals prepare are preparing Tout moun pral fete Everyone’s going to the fete Nan chanpet yo mariye, nan chan- At the champdtre they’ll marry pet yo divose and divorce Nan chanpet yo rekonsiliye . At the champdtre they’ll recon- cile . Mesye mesye mete grinbank sou Mister, Mister, give us a buck nou [greenback] Medanm yo mete gangans sou nou Madams, lay some elegance on us Si se djaz ou ye mete mizik sou nou If you’re with the band, lay some music on us Se nan chanpet pou n we neg ki At the fete we’ll see some macho bon matcho guys Se nan chanpet pou n we fanm ki At the fete we’ll see women who bay filin can turn you on Se nan chanpet pou n we djaz ki At the fete, we’ll see bands play- bay konpa ing konpa2 The yard for dancing at Bas-Limb6 was surrounded with a chest- high block wall. There were cars parked randomly; many taptaps (pick- up trucks converted into brightly painted, covered buses); and female vendors selling sweets, kleuen (cane liquor), and coffee. The ticket win- dow was a hole in the block wall through which a number of people were trying to stick their hands. Joining the battle of the hands, I picked up tickets for our group of four, and we snaked single file through the crowd-control entrance. Inside, the atmosphere was much more “relaks.” Tables dotted the grass in the dark, piled with bottles of Barbancourt rum and with bowls of lanbi (conch). The generator roared off to one side, providing the electricity to run the few lights and the bands PA system. The twelve members of Septentrionale who were present finished tuning their instruments and launched into some older tunes in their patented rhythm, the vit bod dife (fireball rhythm), similar to konpa but with some Cuban influences and idiosyncratic touches. We joined in the slow dancing close to the stage. After a potpourri of romantic boleros, the band sang a recent song about the history of Haiti’s hard- ships since the slave rebellion in 1791, with the following chorus: Se yon mesaj ki pou pase de This is a message to pass from bouchanbouch mouth to mouth xiv Preface Pou tout moun konsantre nan For everyone to concentrate on a priye prayer Pou n wete malediksyon ki sou te To remove this curse from the dayiti land of Haiti3 In writing this song and others in a more socially engaged vein (called mizik angaje, or politically engaged music), Septentrionale joined many other bands and performers who were weighing in on the social transformations shaping the country.