Music of Haiti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Music of Haïti | |
|---|---|
| Carnival | Cadence rampa |
| Kompa | Kadans |
| Méringue | Mizik rasin |
| Rara | Zouk |
| Timeline and Samples | |
| Francophone Caribbean | |
| Martinique and Guadeloupe - Haïti - Louisiana | |
| Other islands | |
| Anguilla - Antigua and Barbuda - Aruba and the Dutch Antilles - Bahamas - Barbados - Bermuda - Cayman Islands - Cuba - Grenada - Jamaica - Dominica - Dominican Republic - Montserrat - Puerto Rico - St Kitts and Nevis - Saint Lucia - St Vincent and the Grenadines - Trinidad and Tobago - Turks and Caicos - Virgin Islands | |
The music of Haiti is influenced most greatly by French colonial ties and African migration (through slavery), as well as by its neighbors, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Styles of music unique to the nation of Haiti include music derived from vodou ceremonical traditions and Kompa. Impoverished Haiti didn't have any recorded music until 1937 when Jazz Guignard was recorded non-commercially.
Contents |
[edit] Vodou music
The religion of the majority of Haitians is vodou and highly formalized percussion is used in spiritual music. Vodou uses music, dance, and spirit possession as a part of religious rituals. The spirit possessions are a mixture of African spirits of popular religious figures and a mixture of popular religious figures of Roman Catholic Saints. The Virgin Mary was associated with the love and beauty of Ezili Freda and Saint Patrick was associated with the driving of snakes of Dambala. These spirits are called lwa. Ounsi initiates the vodou community dances to the music of drums, gongs, and rattles. The goal is to have the lwa travel to Haiti and possess a Haitian worshiper. This is also called “mounting of their horse”. Unusual movements or jerks from normal dancing indicates that the possession has taken place or the “horse mounted”. Once the possession has taken place, the worshiper takes on the personality traits of the lwa. For example, if the lwa is Ezili Freda, then the lwa will demand gifts of perfume, fine clothes, or jewelry from the rest of the worshipers. The lwa have their own music in the forms of ritual songs and these are sung at ceremonies to invite lwa participation. Songs are in combination of Kréyòl and the langay languages that are used in West and Central African religions.
Vodou includes two different kinds of lwa: rada and petwo. Ceremonies may include either rada drums (Tanbou Rada in Haitian Kréyòl) with cowhide covers attached with wooden pegs, or petwo drums (Tanbou Petwo), which have a goatskin cover attached with cords and a more aggressive sound. The rhythms and sounds of vodou performances have many regional variations. For example, some of the most popular rada rhythms from Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas include yanvalou, mayi, zepol, and dawomen, while in Gonaïves, rada takes such names as wanjale, akbadja, and kavalye hounto. In the petwo family one can find: petwo makaya, fran petwo, petwo doki, makandal, bumba, and kita.
There are many other vodou rhythms, including djoumba, kongo, ibo, tchika, raboday, banda, nago, maskawon.
[edit] Vodoou-jazz
When the United States invaded Haiti in 1915, the rituals of vodou were used to reject the cultures of the occupying soldiers. Later classical composers used vodou melodies and tunes in their orchestral and chamber music, and soon "vodou-jazz" was born. Vodou-jazz was very appealing to many Haitians and many young Haitians singers adopted the vodou rhythm and formed Haitian rapè. Rap artists of Haiti use their music to be a vital outlet in the political struggle of their country. Haitian rap music was a major part of the country's musical scene by the late 1980s, laying the groundwork for the emergence of Haitian Wyclef Jean and The Fugees.
[edit] Rara
Rara music was traditionally played during the Carnival celebrations and was an integral part of Haitian vodou relious beliefs. At parades, persons are possessed by the Gedes (a type of lwa that chastize bystanders in extremely offensive terms.)
[edit] Mizik rasin
In the 1990s, a new musical genre evolved that came to be known as mizik rasin, or "roots music". Musicians like RAM, Boukman Eksperyans, and Boukan Ginen incorporated reggae, rock and funk rhythms into traditional vodou forms and instrumentation. Many of these groups included petwo drumming and steel rara horns together with electric guitars and keyboards.
[edit] Konpa
Konpa or Compasin French is a complex, ever-changing music that arose from European ballroom dancing, mixed with Haiti's Creole culture. It is a refined music, played with an underpinning of méringue (related to Dominican merengue) as a basic rhythm. Much of early Haitian music consisted of Western dances with Africanized versions of the accompanying music. Some of these forms still exist, including menwat, a variation of the minuet. In the early 20th century, kompa was influenced by multiple genres, including calypso, salsa, soca and soukous. Beginning in 1915, the American military occupation of Haiti brought swing and big band music, and Haitian musicians incorporated the swinging style into konpa. Among the artists ro rise to prominence was the group Les Jazz de Jeunes.
Konpa direct was invented in the mid-1950s by a group of artists, already then famous, called Coronto International; it soon became popular throughout the Antilles, especially in Martinique and Guadeloupe, where it evolved into zouk. Webert Sicot and Nemours Jean Baptiste became the two major powers in the group. Sicot left and formed a new group and an intense rivalry developed between the two, though they remained good friends. Nemours played a popular, improvised, mambo-influenced style called kompa direct, while Sicot's sophisticated, Cuban-influenced cadence rampa was inaccessible to mainstream listeners.
[edit] Minijazz
As cadence rampa became more and more experimental, and kcompa direct incorporated more effective pop structures, American- and French-style pop spawned minijazz bands that became perhaps the first fully Haitian form of pure pop. Ibo Combo, Les Fantasistes de Carrefour, Shleu Shleu, Les Freres de Jean, Los Incognitos de Pétionville and others remain influential and popular artists. In the early 1970s, Los Incognitos de Pétionville became Tabou Combo, whose 1969 Haiti incorporated major influences from American funk and began a swift rise to international stardom for the band and the Haitian music scene. By 1984, Tabou Combo had become chart-toppers in Paris and elsewhere across the globe.
[edit] Zouk
The mid-1980s saw the blockbuster success of zouk, which soon traded influences with all the greatest of Caribbean genres, including merengue, calypso, salsa, and kompa. The zouk wave was followed by an influx of Haitian artists like System Band, Zin, Top Vice and Karess who incorporated rock and roll, hip hop and jazz into kompa, and experimented with new lyrical content, such as feminism.
[edit] References
- Manuel, Peter, with Kenneth Bilby and Michael Largey. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (2nd edition). Temple University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-59213-463-7.
- Steward, Sue and Sean Harvey. "Compas Points". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 2: Latin & North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, pp 421-429. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0
