Some Haiti-Related Posts

I came across some great, useful, and interesting posts pertaining to Haiti in the past few days. La Revue Indigène, started by the moderators of Haitian History on Tumblr, has posted again. Haitian History on Tumblr has also posted a useful overview of Duvalierism. And last but certainly not least, two lists of great 2014 books on Haiti from The Public Archive and Celucien Joseph are online.

Gospel Trane

Here is some spiritual jazz for Christmas, from Alice Coltrane. "Gospel Trane" is clearly a reference to her late husband, John. Alice Coltrane does not always get the recognition she deserves, and we tend to forget the ways in which she crafted art unique to her vision.

Grog Mwen

An adorable tribute to a Haitian classic, Makaya's rendition of "Grog Mwen" is a welcome addition. Also worth checking out are versions of the song from Haitiando, Africando, and last, but certainly not least, Super Jazz des Jeunes. Clearly, some Haitian music is indebted to the influence of Cuban styles.

The Revolutionary Abolitionists of Haiti

Listen to a Laurent Dubois lecture on the Haitian Revolution here. Dubois discusses the Haitian Revolution with a focus on individuals or biographies of some of the leading historical actors. "The Revolutionary Abolitionists of Haiti" is a great lecture and introduction to the Haitian Revolution, like Dubois's Avengers of the New World.

Lessons of Hayti

A very interesting documentary on the Hayti district of Durham, North Carolina. Named after Haiti, Hayti grew to be one of many self-sufficient, thriving black towns or urban districts across the US. It is fitting that this successful enclave of African-Americans in Durham would name their neighborhood after the first independent black republic, Haiti. Also worth checking out is this interview with the man behind the documentary series, and this historic film on Hayti.

Mary McLeod Bethune, Haiti, and Black Feminists

Source

Mary McLeod Bethune, influential figure in the Black Freedom Struggle and one of the leaders of the National Council of Negro Women. Often obscured in our memories of this important and powerful Black woman is her links to Haiti, a country she only visited once. Bethune was friends with the President of Haiti's wife, Lucienne Estimé, and awarded Haiti's Medal of Honor and Merit.

While she only visited in Haiti during 1949 (the same year of President Estimé's Exposition for the Bicentennial of Port-au-Prince), the National Council of Negro Women had been in communication and solidarity with the Haitian women's movement throughout the 1940s. The Ligue d'Action Feminine Sociale, established in the 1930s, maintained links with Black women organizations and feminists in the US and some of its members traveled and met with African-American women, too.

African American Women and Haitian women had also found solidarity and worked together earlier (as early as the 1920s, when African-American women showed an interest in anti-US Occupation collaboration and research on the conditions of Haitian women) in the International Council of Women of the Darker Races, an organization consisting mostly of African-American women and a small contingent of important Haitian feminists (including Theodora Holly, Haitian daughter of an African-American immigrant, Theodore Holly). Clearly, the Haitian women's movement of the 1930s and 1940s was tied to broader Black women's movements in the US and international collaborative projects.

For more information, read Grace Louis Sanders's "La Voix des Femmes: Haitian Women's Rights, National Politics, and Black Activism in Port-au-Prince and Montreal, 1934-1986." Her excellent work is the source for this post, and eloquently elucidates the origins and forms of Haitian women's activism in Haiti and the Diaspora.

Robin D.G. Kelley

Gotta love Robin D.G. Kelley, public intellectual, jazz aficionado, and an academic unafraid to take a stance. I have read his excellent biography of Monk, enjoyed his take on cultural politics and discourses of race and class, was fascinated by Black Communists in Alabama during the Great Depression, and was enthralled by his analysis of exchanges between Africa and US in the lives of 4 understudied jazz artists. 

La Pati La Pata

One of my favorites from legendary Malavoi. This is also one of the more jazzy Malavoi songs I have heard, another example of how versatile the band was in playing the myriad styles of the Caribbean and jazz worlds.

The Stuart Hall Project

A highly recommendable overview of the life and times of Stuart Hall, a pioneer in Cultural Studies of Jamaican origins who studied at Oxford. Hall discusses racism against people of Caribbean and African descent in England, how he came to reject the class/color restrictions of colonial Jamaica, his work as an editor of leftist journals, and broader processes of identity and cultural formation. I have recently rediscovered his other work, documentary series, and his status as a public intellectual, so this film is an excellent introduction. Another worthwhile video is Hall's interview of Trinidadian intellectual, leftist, and avid cricket fan, CLR James, a towering figure of Black thought who influenced Hall.

Remembering 1946

With Haiti in the news again as Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe resigns, one cannot help but think of the large protests and unrest that rocked Haiti in the 1946, culminating in a revolution that unseated Lescot. During the current wave of protests, journalists described protesters as gathering around the grounds of the destroyed National Palace and I immediately thought of Matthew J. Smith's Red and Black in Haiti, which is where I found this photo. 

El Martiniqueño

A nice big band merengue based on "Sly Mongoose," exemplifying links between various styles of music in the Caribbean archipelago. Perhaps "Sly Mongoose" entered the Dominican Republic through West Indian laborers, or the appeal of calypso bands. Either way, it's an infectious song!

Francis Santana, Haiti, and Colombia

Francis Santana, accompanied by Antonio Morel's merengue orchestra, sings a Haitian song in Kreyol that I first heard from Pepe Bayard, "Trois Bebes" (though I believe the song predates Bayard and Gary French). The earliest recording of the song appears to be from the 1950s Haitian Dance Bands Vol. 1 compilation. In addition to the Dominican merengue cover, a Colombia cumbia version can be heard here.

The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples

I think The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its Peoples will be the last of the general histories of the Caribbean I shall read for the foreseeable future. This has nothing to do with the quality of the text, but after a while, one must find more specific histories to engage with to learn all the nuances and particularities of individual islands or states. Anyway, what I loved about this course is how similar the text's chronology and inclusiveness was to Francisco Scarano's undergraduate Caribbean history course I took some years back. Scarano really emphasized the indigenous Caribbean, the Haitian Revolution, slavery, and Puerto Rico, but due to the limitations of a single semester undergraduate course, did not cover nearly as much as he would have liked.

From talking to others after the publication of this voluminous history of the Caribbean (which he edited, along with Stephan Palmié), that very course I once took now uses this book and is certainly more extensive and inclusive of other aspects of Caribbean history. For instance, the complexities of Caribbean ecology, environmental constraints, 'creolization' in the indigenous Caribbean, as well as inclusion of mainland regions like Suriname and Belize into the Caribbean world paints, with broad strokes, accessible and accurate introductory essays to the history of the Caribbean.

What I would have liked more is substantial citations for each individual essay, particularly because some essay authors included only a handful of references. The book includes a bibliography showing sources for each part of the book (the text is divided into separate parts moving chronologically and thematically) at the end, which is useful, too. Also appreciative is the broader 'Old World' precedents in sugar production that are excellent for framing the broader Atlantic World context of sugarcane. Nonetheless, this is an excellent overview of the Caribbean, from the Taino to the era of globalization that hits on all the themes touched upon by Garrie Gibson and Gad Heuman in their histories of the Caribbean (slavery, race, Cuban Revolution, Haitian Revolution, gender, imperialism/colonialism, creolization, culture, emancipation).

The Caribbean: A Brief History

Gad Heuman's 2nd edition The Caribbean: A Brief History is the latest general history of the Caribbean I recently read. Perfect for students, Heuman's 2nd edition includes extensive recommended readings and a broad overview of nearly every aspect of Caribbean history in a short text. Heuman added much more to this edition on the indigenous Caribbean societies, and focuses on social history, emphasizing subaltern agency, culture, slavery, gender, race, and labour. Like Carrie Gibson's work, Heuman also places the Cuban Revolution into a broader Caribbean context, but the book is stronger on the non-Hispanic Caribbean, especially Jamaica and the British West Indies. While giving a whole chapter to the Haitian Revolution and another for the Cuban Revolution, Heuman's work is overall much more informative and inclusive of the non-Hispanic Caribbean, and Haiti after the 1804 is rarely part of the narrative, despite brief discussion of US occupations in the Greater Antilles.

Maringa, Merengue, and West African Music

I do not believe anyone has verified if there is indeed a link between Caribbean merengue and Sierra Leone's maringa, although the ties between Caribbean music and that of West Africa have been fruitful in terms of highlife. The names sound too similar to be a coincidence, and we know maringa's early history in Sierra Leone was linked to Krio people with descent from across the Atlantic, according to Paul Austerlitz. Nonetheless, after listening to some recordings of maringa or "maringar" music from Sierra Leone, particularly the music of Ebenezer Calendar, the music sounds more like Caribbean calypso and highlife (although the rhythms of some songs actually remind me of baião music from Brazil, such as in "Fire, Fire, Fire").

From songs like these, it is difficult to see any correlation between Sierra Leone's maringa and the Dominican merengue, although one can find songs from the United States, such as a classic blues from Bessie Smith re-recorded by Ebenezer Calendar. It's possible maringa from Central Africa was an influence, too, given the popularity of dance called maringa in colonial Brazzaville, according to Phyllis Martin. For similar music from Sierra Leone, check out Famous Scrubbs, and palm-wine music (like the Kumasi Trio), which spread throughout West Africa partly because of coastal sailors, such as the Kru. It seems undeniable that Afro-Caribbean influences were part of this thick musical stew that connected various parts of West Africa from the 19th century to the rise of highlife, but merengue as we know it does not seem to have been a large part of it, at least not as significant as calypso and Cuban son.

n addition, one cannot forget how recaptives, colonialism, religion, and migration shaped culture in West Africa, leading to cosmopolitan or diverse influences for musical culture. Perhaps one day someone will write an exhaustively researched history of highlife music in West Africa that demonstrates how all of these aforementioned influences. Adidtional research is needed on the question of the relationship between the Congolese maringa and that of West Africa, too. For a great example of how West African music as early as the 1920s reflected several cultural influences and was shaped by Europe and the Americas, check out the West African Instrumental Quintet recordings from 1929, here and here.

Issa El Saieh et Son Orchestre

Came across some lovely recordings by Issa El Saieh and His Orchestra of Haitian music in a jazz or big band vein. In addition to the classic "Carolina Cao," Issa El Saieh's group also recorded "Ma Brune," "Panama m tombe," and a hot number called "Ti Mama." "Ma Brune" is an excellent example of a Haitian song translated and recorded recorded by Sonora Matancera as "Morena."

Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean From Columbus to the Present Day

Carrie Gibson's Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day provides an excellent overview of more than 500 years of Caribbean history, as the ambitious title indicates. What stood out in Gibson's analysis is her broader definition of 'Caribbean,' including at times Central America (especially British Honduras and Belize, but also Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama) and South America's Spanish-speaking countries like Venezuela and Colombia. Her move to include, albeit marginally, these circum-Caribbean mainland societies is wise because, as her title suggests, the Caribbean is a crossroads of various imperial powers, thereby connecting the histories of the entirety of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Gibson also manages to delve deeper into the context of the Iberian peninsula and Mediterranean in the early parts of the book (such as the island conquests and antecedents of the Caribbean colonies, particularly the Canary Islands and the Atlantic islands, such as Madeira), devotes ample attention to the Haitian Revolution (as well as the Age of Revolution more generally for the Caribbean), the rise of chattel slavery, and covers the various developments of Caribbean history from colonialism to independence. Gibson's analysis weakens when her chronological history reaches the 20th century, partly due to the brevity of her chapters on complex political history in some islands, such as Haiti under the Duvaliers. In addition, she uses the word "voodoo" instead of the less pejorative Vodou, to describe the religion. By no means does the author subscribe to racist notions of Haitian Vodou, but the pejorative connotations are problematic to use in a general history.

One supposes by necessity Gibson's text would eventually have to leave out the details or a serious study of all aspects of 20th century Caribbean history down to specific islands, but she excels in weaving together the broader strokes of the Caribbean region's common themes, interconnections, and problems wrought by colonialism, tourism, the World Wars, the Cold War, inequality, and ethnic and racial divisions. Inclusion of the mainland "Caribbean" also enhances her argument and the shared political, social, and economic histories of the area. For instance, how can one tell the history of the British West Indies without discussing the Panama Canal, the rise of the banana industry, and West Indian migrant laborers in Central America or Cuba? Or the rise of Black Power in Trinidad without discussing Rastafarianism, the US Black Freedom Struggle, and the declining conditions across the Anglophone Caribbean?

The case of Garvey's UNIA is an excellent example of the author's talent to connect the Panama Canal, Caribbean migrant laborers, and immigrants in the US to show how the Caribbean cannot be understood as islands or mainlands in isolation. How can one properly understand the history of the Caribbean without placing the Haitian and Cuban Revolutions in a pan-Caribbean perspective, or, indeed, a Latin American perspective, as the case of Haiti in the anti-colonial movements of Venezuela, Colombia, and even Mexico emerges? In sum, Gibson accomplishes her goal in showing how the Caribbean is also one of the first sites of modernity, globalization, and the rise of consumers and industrial revolutions in western Europe. Gibson deserves accolades for that, as well as demolishing the myth of the Caribbean paradise that remains so pervasive to this day.