Muzik Rasin: Popular Music of Haiti

It begins in the late 1970s (with discontent surrounding the increasing opulence of the Duvalier dictatorship), youth from Port-au-Prince (and to a lesser Cap-Haitien and other local places) started experimenting with the new types of life. Francois Duvalier’s appropriation of Vodou images as a terror method, the increase in United States Assembly and large-scale export agriculture, the fame of disco and Jean-Claude Duvalier’s appreciation of konpa and chanson francaise disappointed many youth and love.

source of picture: fsuworldmusiconline.wikidot.com

The question of dictatorship’s notion to the Haitian nation (and thus the dictatorship itself), several men started trying a new way of life, embodied in the Sanba Movement. They drew upon global movement in black power, Bob Marley, Hippie dom as well as prominently from city life in Haiti. They dressed in the traditional blue denim (karoko) of peasants, avoided the commercialized and processed life giving by the global capitalism, and celebrating the values of communal living. Later, they accepted the matted hair which looks like dreadlocks, but identified the pattern as something which existed in Haiti with the term cheve simbi, which mean water spirits.

The most popular of these were Sanba Zao (Louis Lesile Macellin), Ayizan (Harry Sanon), Azouke (Gregory Sanon), Aboudja (Ronald Derencourt), Kebyesou Danle (Jean Raymond) and Chico (Yves Boyer). They create a band known as Sanba yo and later, Gwoup Sa. Later still, other artists such as Papa Bonga, Eddy Fran cois, Lolo (Theodore Beaubrun) joined the movement. This was the recent drummer to what would become mizik rasin. One of these orchestras recorded an album in the 1980s for a UNICEF campaign for vaccination which is included on the LP Konbit.

During the 1990s, commercial success came to the musical genre that came to be known as mizik rasin or roots music, artists such as Boukman Ekspertans and Boukan Ginen and to a lesser extent RAM, incorporated reggae, funk rhythms and rock into folk forms and instrumentation, which include rara, music from kanaval, or traditional spiritual music from the city hamlets known as lakous such as Lakou Souvnans, Lakou Soukri, Lakou Badjo and Lakou Dereyal. However, initially the people involved followed the ways of the Sanba trend, eventually this started to fade. Increased political and economic pressures saw many of these people migrate (to the United States and Canada mainly). Both those who live and those who traveled between countries started adding more non-Haitian (strictly speaking) elements and implements a more commercial sound to earn more money and a wider spectators.

However the message of much of the samba-oriented bands adopt values of equality, many members have been connected to male chauvinism ideas and even local violence.