*****************in
this post*************
Content
of this Ezili Dantò's Note:
The Sanba Movement and Roots/Rasin
Sound
1. Haitian Dance and Drumming
Pioneers - a Primer
2. Haitian Roots - Rasin - Music
- The Rhythm cannot be separated
from sacred Dancing
3.The Original Sanbas
- Boukman Eksperyans,
Sanba Yo and Group Sa (Foula Jazz)
- Boukman Eksperyans –
The First Incarnation
- Neg Kafou at Professor Denis
Emile's artist collective
- The Sanba Movement
4. Group Sa (Foula Jazz)
5. The Original Members of
Sanba Yo
- Sanba Yo Recordings
- Learning
to Write down the Vodun Rhythms
6. Art that Teaches Haitian
Culture and Values
7. What is Roots Music and Styles
of Roots Music?
Zakafest
- May 1 to May 4, 2008
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The
Sanba Movement and Haitian Roots/Rasin Music
Ezili Danto's Note:
1. HAITIAN
DANCE AND DRUMMING PIONEERS: A PRIMER
What do you know about the pioneers, the elders of Haitian dance? The
pioneers of Haitian roots ("rasin") music?
Do you know who Viviane Gauthier is, Jean Leon Destine? Jolicoeur? Herve
Maxi? Edwige Duverger? Yvrose Green? Louines Louinis? Gaston "Bonga"
Jean-Baptiste? Frisner Augustin? Fanfan Damas? These folks have played
significant roles in putting Haitian dance and drumming on the world
map.
Do you know how long Haiti's most famous dance troupe, Ballet Bacoulou
d’Haiti has been in existence? Where the radiant and accomplished,
Yvrose Green is taking Ballet Bacoulou today, 48 years since Ballet
Bacoulou d’Haiti was first created? Or, that Ballet Bacoulou d'Haiti
is one of the only Haitian institutions to have survived Haiti’s
instabilities since 1959 and is still thriving and expanding?
And you say you love Haiti. So why don’t you know these extraordinary
artists or their work?
Ok, maybe you know and even understand who Odette L. Wiener and Adrien
Ciceron were and the contributions they made to Haitian dance and theater.
Or, that the iconic Jean Leon Destine, who used to dance in Katherine
Dunham’s troupe way back in the 1930s, is still with us, teaching
selected workshops in the traditional and sacred Haitian dances and
rhythms in New York and California?
If you know that, then you know the master dancer/choreographer Peniel
Guerrier is taking over the US reigns where Jean Leon Destine left off
and that Peniel is also following in the New York footsteps of master
Haitian dance teachers like Lionel St. Surin, Julio Jean and Nadia Dieudonnee.
Peniel
Guerrier is hands down the hottest and most tireless of the
currently practicing master Haitian dance teachers, performers and choreographers
on the Haitian dance scene. Having not too long ago left Haiti, he is
single-handedly holding down the fort for Haitian dance in New York,
teaching both at Alvin Ailey and The Djoniba Dance and Drum Center,
as well as being the executive director of the dance troupe, Tamboula
D’Haiti.
The lexicon of authentic Haitian Vodun dance, drumming, rasin music
and song, provide critical tools for gathering together parts of that
Haitian self, erased by ecclesiastic and Western (“Pèpè)
education. Or, drowned in the everlasting search for asylum, amnesty
and justice singularly denied non-assimilated Haitians by the rage of
the New World rulers. By appropriating Vodun imagery, psychology and
vocabulary, these Haitian artists struggle on and triumph - "alternating
between suffering and expanding."
This is the Haitian cultural frame by which Haiti’s Roots
- Rasin - artists, like Foula Jazz and Sanba Yo, extend their
uniqueness into the world and decipher their own signs (vèvès),
visions and sources of life.
But don’t worry if you know little about Haitian dance, the drumming
elders and the current players, I will soon publish, for the Ezili's
Network, in some detail, text and video interviews we’ve done
with some of these artists; their own words about Haitian dance, its
history. And as well, endeavor a brief exploration of Ezili’s
stage performances. Noting its organic application of elements of Vodun/roots
music, Vodun metaphysics, poetic dreamscape and the basic components
of Haitian dance movements, sacred rhythms, its cultural context, modern
metamorphoses and transformational intent.
2. HAITIAN ROOTS - RASIN - MUSIC
But today, I am moved to write, not on Haitian dance, but Haitian Roots
- “Rasin” - music. Why? Because if you are in Haiti right
now, and put on the radio, it's virtually all rap and yes, much in English
or a mix. But, then again, strangers occupy Haiti right now.
Where are the elders of liberation music in Haiti? What’s are
the names of the top three Haitian racine/roots groups of the 1980’s
and early 1990’s and what are they doing with the pain and breath
of the people in terms of music, right now. Do you know?
Where, pray tell, is Sanba Yo, Foula
Jazz and Boukman Eksperyans?
These bands came onto the scene around 1978, 1979. Are the members still
alive, or has the perennial Haitian struggle for life and freedom eaten
and swallowed them whole, and made them as unproductive as the anti-Duvalier
politicians of their days are today?
This brief introduction to Haiti’s modern Roots music and some
of its pioneering musicians focus on the history and styles of racine
music, and answers the question as to where, in the pantheon of Haiti's
great racine musicians, would the work of Foula Jazz and Sanba Yo be
placed.
The Rhythm cannot be separated
from sacred Dancing
But the sound cannot be set apart from the Haitian dances of the Gods,
nor the dance separated from the call and response of the drums. Dance
and music is entwined in the African cultures, Haiti is no exception.
One cannot be separated from the other.
The indigenous Haitian or Vodun way, is participatory. The artists of
Group Sa, Foula Jazz and Sanba Yo were not Haitian artists who made
music simply for people to listen to. The music is for dancing. The
music is for healing. The traditional Haitian dances are connected to
sacred drumming rhythms and patterns. Dancing them is a sacred task
to slough off bad energies and purify the body to host the healing and
sacred energies of Vodun. The sacred Haitian dances and rhythms are
calls, the hieroglyphics in sound to give life to the Haitian Gods.
"Vodun music is not made for observing, watching or listening to.
That is the difference between Haitian culture and other cultures,"
says Chico Boyer of Foula Jazz. “Our traditional rhythms come
from Ginen, its participatory. You can’t be a bystander, you must
be in it. I think at some point, that’s how American Jazz was.
Before it was taken over by others. It was meant for dancing, not just
for listening.”
3.
THE ORIGINAL SANBAS
There is, of course, some controversy as to who started the modern Rasin
music movement in Haiti. And, I hear some discussion, it was Sanba Zao
(aka, Louis Lesly Marcelin) of the group Sanba Yo. Or, it was Lòlò
Beaubrun of Boukman Eksperyans.
Boukman Eksperyans - The First Incarnation,
the Sanba Movement, Neg Kafou at Professor Denis Emile's artist collective
Boukman Eksperyans - The First Incarnation
Perhaps history will record that the
nucleus of modern Haitian Roots/Rasin Music came out of a group of musicians
who got together around the year 1979 and formed a band known as Boukman
Eksperyans. Perhaps not. It’s fairly known there’s some
competition for this sought-after kudos. Which is a reason to learn
more about the groups known as “Sanba Yo” and “Foula
Jazz” since they never reached the commercial heights of Boukman
Eksperyans (the second incarnation) and thus are not as well known outside
of Haiti’s Root music aficionado circles as Boukman Eksperyans
(the second incarnation).
The men who made up that nucleus of this first incarnation of Boukman
Eksperyans, around 1979 were: Fanfan Alexi, Chico Boyer, Jean Marie
Claude* ( "Ti Krab") and Theodore Beaubrun, Jr. ("Lòlò").
Apparently, in their first incarnation they did not perform.
(Sanba Zao and Mimerose Beaubrun:
Conversations with Chico Boyer of Foula and Sanba Zao reveal that Sanba
Zao was there when the first Boukman Eksperyans musicians where jamming
and practicing at Languichat's (Theodore Beaubrun, Sr.) house back in
1979. Sanba Zao, folks say, was then a good friend of Lòlò
Beaubrun from Boukman Eksperyans and Mimerose was then Lòlò’s
girlfriend. So, though back then they were not official members of the
group, they were always there with the group jamming. At the time Sanba
Zao was one of the chief founders of the Sanba Movement.
The research indicates that Lòlò Beaubrun had returned
to Haiti in 1978 from residing in the U.S. But, according to Chico Boyer,
because they soon could not use the Languichat house, they had no place
to practice and Boukman Eksperyans (the first incarnation) wound up
breaking up. Soon afterwards, Chico Boyer started frequenting an artist
enclave in Kafou, home of a Haitian guitar player name Denis Emile.
There, these Haitian musicians had jamming sessions and music studies
that went on all day and all night.
Neg
Kafou at Professor Denis Emile's artist collective
At some point in this
chronology, Fanfan Alexi immigrated to the U.S. and Chico Boyer says
that it is, in Kafou, at Denis Emile’s artist collective, that
he met Wilfrid "Tido" Lavaud, Doudou Chancy, and the other
members who would form Group Sa, which eventually regrouped under the
name "Foula Jazz".
What becomes clear is that the versatile bass player, Chico Boyer and
Sanba Zao were at both centers where the musicians, who later form bands
that would pioneer the Rasin sound, congregated in music jamming and
study sessions. But, says Azouke of Sanba Yo fame, "These guys
were not using the traditional drums. When I met them, we (Sanba Yo)
brought our Vodun drums to them. Neg Kafou yo te lan Jaz, Bosanova,
Brazilian styles - the Haitians at Kafou (Denis Emile's house)
were into Jazz, Bosanova, Brazilian styles. Neg kay Languichat yo
te lan Jimmy Hendrix and Santana - The musicians who gathered at
Theodore Beaubrun, Sr's house, were into Jimmy Hendrix and Santana.
Fanfan Alexi was playing Jimmy Hendrix."
It must be noted here that sometime after the founding of Group Sa in
1981, Lòlò Beaubrun, who had resided in the US until 1978,
founded a group to study Vodun music, called Moun Ife ("People
from the place of the Deities"). Boyer tell us that "Moun
Ife" came after the Kafou gatherings had begun and after the founding
of Group Sa.
The Sanba Movement was already in existence before the founding of Group
Sa. However, the band, Sanba Yo, didn't officially come together until
after Group Sa broke up. The collective that gathered together at Denis
Emile’s place to study Haitian music existed and played the music
in sessions with others like Wilfrid "Tido" Lavaud, Sanba
Zao, Chico Boyer and the other Sanbas’, who were living Haiti's
realities and had imbibed - in an unbroken strand - elements of Vodun
ways, their whole life.
Also, according to those who were there, this music movement, was not
called Rasin or Roots music at this point. But Sanba Zao and his homeboys
- flannè zòn kafou fey yo - were called "Sanba,"
even back then.
In the Haitian tradition a "Sanba" is the artist-farmer, the
revered storyteller, healer/therapist or griot, whose job is to lead
the singing, chanting, call and response of the traditional work songs
and playing of the drums that keeps the rhythm of the work going at
a Haitian Konbit. Another word for the same function is “Simidò.”
A Konbit is when all the Lakou and farmers of an area
join together, as an extended family, to help one another get done whatever
work that needs to be done, whether it's planting, bringing in the harvest,
fixing a fence or re-building a home after a storm or unforeseen occurrence.
The Haitian Sanba's job is to do all that's required, improvising whatever
is necessary as the community's acknowledge atis (artist) and
poet/philosopher. The Sanba knows his people, can recite their stories
and can keep the rhythm of the work going with the traditional songs
as well as being able to use the community's life and story to keep
everyone entertained, making up whatever poetry, music is necessary,
choosing which of the Vodun drum rhythms (Petwo, Rada) is most
appropriate to tell the village their story. To keep up their spirits
and encourage them as they work.
The Sanba Movement
"WE DID
NOT CALL OURSELVES “RASIN” – ROOTS – MUSICIANS,
BUT SANBA. WE CALLED EACH OTHER SANBA."
The thoughtful poet and incredible Sanba
Ayizan of the disbanded Sanba Yo, says that the musicians
in his group in particular, saw themselves then and even now, not as
part of a Rasin music movement, but a SANBA MOVEMENT. The label “Roots
- Rasin- music” came to identify their music, says Sanba
Ayizan, when a radio show that played Vodun music hosted by Jean Francillon,
on Haitian national radio, called it “Roots music” after
playing a Sanba Yo demo for the listeners. The label stuck and caught
fire. And groups who played Vodun music and drumming, with modern instrumentations,
soon became widely known as Rasin – Roots - musicians.
Sanba Yo only played at the universities and only for revolution, education
and healing. These artists called each other “Sanba” in
the Haitian tradition of a Sanba - the African artist/philosopher or
poet/griot chronicler of the life and heart of their people. The Sanbas’
lived in cooperative ways - sharing ownership of everything they had,
living to enjoy the simple things in life - to extend a community collective;
to promote and elevate the whole Haitian community, not just the individual,
not Western religions, foreign languages or traditions. But Kreyol,
Haitian history, culture, Ginen values, Haitian herbal cures and the
healing and cooperative Vodun ways of living and being. Their means,
their sickle and machete, leaves and herbs, was music - sacred songs,
Vodun rhythms and the traditional Vodun instruments.
Here is how the organizers of Zakafest, a festival celebrating the spirit
of Agriculture and Labor with Haitian Culture, describe the Sanba Movement:
“Starting in the late 1970s, youth from Port-au-Prince began
experimenting with new types of life. To question the notion of "the
Haitian nation", several men led by Louis Lesly Marcelin, also
known as Sanba Zao began trying a new way of living, embodied in the
Sanba Movement. They drew upon global trends in black power, Bob Marley,
"Hippie"-dom, as well as prominently from rural life in Haiti.
They dressed in the traditional blue denim (karoko) of peasants, eschewed
the commercialized and processed life offered by global capitalism,
and celebrated the values in communal living.”
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Little
Girl 
