Pasos Perdidos
Image courtesy of Antonia Zennaro.
Historical production in the West is almost exclusively a written affair. History books are compiled from archives, whose endless sheaves of papers are generally produced by institutions and figures of authority. The truth suffers many casualties in the process.
History as we know it typically explains itself by way of the actions of Great Men and their consequences, in part as a way to find coherence out of chaos. How, for instance, might you account for all of the voices and desires that created a free Haiti in 1803? It is simpler to reduce multitudes into sequences of events like the following:
Toussaint Louverture dies a shivering prisoner in the French Alps.
General Jean-Jacques Dessalines steels himself to defeat Napoleon’s conquering army.
Another constitution is written.
Thus with the stroke of a pen is the birth of a nation summarized. But Men of Action rarely leave behind much indication of what was felt by those around them as they marched and bayoneted their way through time. Their stories are trapped within the bounds of cause and effect. Music, on the other hand, knows no such limitations. Its creation is always marked by the moment and place in which it was made, but songs move more freely in time. They can just as easily capture a generation’s political zeitgeist as inform us of the tempo of a people’s daily living. As a music tradition travels and evolves, its texture is the sum of all it has been before. A drum beat comes from West Africa to the Caribbean, where it is combined with instruments from Spain, and used to describe a life very different from anything experienced on either continent. Living testimonials, these melodies allow their listeners to perceive history through the senses instead of the mind.
Alexey Martí, Composer and Percussionist
If you analyze this continent from north to south everything goes back to Haiti. Everything starts there. The slave, the sugar cane, it has a big role. My grandmother is from Haiti, there’s a lot of people from Haiti who moved to Cuba. A lot of people from Cuba and Haiti moved to New Orleans. It’s nice for New Orleans to be in the Gulf, because you got a lot of trade. You put New Orleans a hundred miles north, nothing would be going on. This triangle, Cuba, New Orleans, Haiti. It’s a lot of influence, a lot of music. Everything is going on in this area—religious systems, music, commercial. Everything that starts with commercial, it’s gonna become political, and it’s gonna end with culture. The people who move from one area to another area, they will bring everything with them. They take what they learned in that land and move forward to another place.
I’m born and raised in Cuba. I played percussion since I’m seven years old, playing for religious purposes in my house. My father used to work in the sugarcane, my grandparents too. In my family we played music for fun, or for spirit, not professional. Or spiritual system, we have to say, because when you say it’s a religious system, it’s something you inherit, something you live by. For example we inherit the Yoruba system from Nigeria. Those people had a religious system we call Ifá. It’s beautiful, a beautiful system.
That’s the way we live in Cuba. Most people are not Christian, they’re practicing the Yoruba system. You have to understand when they brought Africans to the continent, Spain, those kings were very religious, they tried to convert everybody. What happened was a lot of people in that moment they made them believe they were Christian. When they saw Christian saints with the same color, like for example Santa Barbara they said oh Changó—black and white. Red and white—oh they saw Mercedes, oh Obatalá. They saw blue and white, oh Yemayá. So they pray, say oh we got it! But no, it was undercover. They never give up the old religion. One of the things that helped them was that Spain let them play music. They didn’t want for the black people to talk, but they let them play. The music, the drum, it’s a very strong thing, very important. Without the drum what is New Orleans music? Nothing. We have to understand this: we’re born with rhythm, and we die because the rhythm stops. You’re born because your heart beats, tu tu, tu tu, tu tu, the pulse, tu tu, tu tu, it’s the first thing you got in your body, rhythm. And you die when the rhythm stops.
Cuba has a very very important role in this continent, because when nobody wants to talk about Africa in this continent we always say, we inherited Africa, that’s who we are. Many people don’t want to be related to Africa. Cubans, we say this is who we are as a nation and as a culture. And every year there’s more, more, more people going to Cuba with religious purpose.
Tell me what is the most influential country on United States music? Cuba. But how many people can play Cuban music here in this city? In the 1930s the number one hit was El Manisero, everyone knows this song, now nobody knows. I have friends who like the Beatles, I say do you know the Beatles took a lot from Cuba? We laugh in Cuba many times, we saw how people took things from Cuba and made a new brand. I understand why, it’s political issues with Castro. People in United States don’t know a lot, because it’s not in the books, they don’t let you know, they don’t teach you about that. It’s not fair. This is history, everybody have to know about history.
I was teaching in a summer camp, a school in Slidell. I asked them how many people here have been in the second line... only two. Only two. Every white person in that room had never been exposed to the second line. The family doesn’t want them to be exposed to that world. My wife lives here, she used to be a student in Tulane. When she moved here, she asked me many times if I wanted to come to the United States, and I wasn’t one hundred percent on that. I was playing music in Cuba. If you are in Cuba you don’t have to do two or three jobs to survive. If you’re a musician, you’re good. I said though, you know what, let me try it. I’m still in shock with a lot of what I see in the United States. It’s fascinating. I’ve learned how complicated is this society. I like it. I put more attention to the beautiful things than the ugly stuff. That’s in the way of approaching life. You look for the beauty, and not for the ugly.
Leyla McCalla, Multi-instrumentalist and singer
Both of my parents were born in Haiti and migrated to the US in the 60s during the Duvalier regime. I was born in Queens, New York. My parents were very politically involved in human rights issues and the politics of immigration in the United States, particularly Haitian refugee human rights, so I grew up with a certain consciousness of those issues.
When I was ten I spent three months in Haiti with my grandmother. My grandmother had been an immigrant in the United States and moved back to start a school. She didn’t have a lot of support but she had a lot of passion for Haiti. She was a Vodou priestess, which was very unorthodox for her class—she was kind of a rebel. It was important to her that I understood what life was like for kids in Haiti, because I think she thought we were just the most American spoiled brat kids ever, which we probably were, in retrospect. I was really into writing and journalism at the time, and she would take me on these walks and I’d be interviewing street kids. It was important to her that I got a sense for what Haiti was. I remember I didn’t want to leave after that summer.
I came down here to New Orleans to play music in the street with these women I met in New York, and I really fell in love with it. It was hard because New York was such a big part of my idea of what it meant to be an adult, or to make it. But when I moved down here in 2010, I never questioned it after that. Now I own a house here, my daughter was born here, I got married here. It’s home.
I was surprised living here how much Haiti came up. The architecture really reminded me of Haiti, and the tropical feel to the city, a bunch of things made me feel like it was sympathetic vibrations. I remember going to St. Louis Cemetary and seeing my family name on the tombstones and being really intrigued by that. Learning more about the French colonial legacy I saw the cultural connections that it fomented. I feel like it’s endless.
I started playing old-time New Orleans music and realized that if I can play New Orleans music on the cello, I can play Cajun songs on cello, and Zydeco songs. I could use this instrument as the rhythm and as the melody. At that point I had played with a lot of bands and was really proficient at playing by ear. I could sit down at a jam and learn how to play the song, which is different from most people that come up in the classical world. I felt that I’d found a niche that wasn’t really being explored.
I was really into trad jazz, and started to play tenor banjo, and subsequently learned there’s an incredibly rich banjo tradition in Haiti. I remember traveling to Cap Haitien after I first started and just being blown away by how many banjos I saw everywhere. I started to see all these connections, even rara and second line music. There are all these layers of translation that have happened. I’m still endlessly fascinated by that and inspired by that. I feel like it’s America’s biggest secret, the cultural influence that happened after the mass migration from Saint Domingue after the Haitian Revolution. Once you start to see those things you can start to recognize all these inconsistencies in American rhetoric about freedom and democracy, and equality for all. It all really depends on what you look like and where you come from and how much money you have.
I have Haitian people who come to me at my shows with tears in their eyes because no one is talking about this stuff on stage, no one is trying to explain it to people who don’t know anything about Haiti and just think of it as this place of poverty and despair. And there are other hard conversations. I think even people that are progressive and like minded need to challenge each other and grow. Just thinking of the past as something that isn’t separate from us gives us a lot to chew on. And there’s also a part of me that wonders how human nature fits into all of that. What is the ideal world? What does that mean? I’m just not someone who is going to sit back and write love songs.
Alvin Reece, Club Caribbean
Before me there was Oasis on the corner, owned by Wes Thompson. He was the one who originally started reggae on Bayou Road. I had gone a couple of times, I liked the vibe. When I fell in love with reggae, after that it took off like a wave. I fell in love with reggae and I stuck with it. I been here since ‘99. When I took this club over, I changed the name to Club Caribbean.
This road right here has history. Bayou Road is the oldest road in the city—slaves walked on these cobblestones down to the bayou. The businesses here are tight enough to know we want to keep it Afrocentric. Community Bookstore, down to this reggae club, the Coco Hut—the Caribbean food is always fresh over by Mother Nature. At King and Queen Emporium they sell shea butter and oils. Nobody’s trying to sell, we want to keep it black owned. This street is about culture, the culture is something we cannot let be taken away with gentrification. That’s what we’re trying to hold on to. Black-owned businesses need to stay here and nurture each other. You see the gentrification trying to happen—around the corner some of the houses being renovated, the skyrocketing prices. I’m amazed. The pay is not going up, but the rent is.
I have my good days and bad days, but I weather the storm. Business is business, and I could have easily had some other things come in like hip hop. But that’s just a negative vibe, so I stuck with reggae. Other people might have reggae nights, but reggae is all I do. The message in the roots music is positive. I’m not a rasta but I love rasta. I love the culture. It’s a way of life.
I’ve had big artists in here. This is the last place Lucky Dube played before he passed away. People don't know that. He got rained out at Jazz Fest and I booked him here. It was the last show he played in the U.S. There’s a lot of history in this club. This year, I want to bring a lot of live music in. I’ve had so many reggae artists other people aren’t bringing: Beanie Man, Christopher Martin, Barrington Levy, Ky-mani Marley, QQ, Mr. Vegas, original Mighty Diamonds, Etana, Richie Spice, Cecil, Mad Cobra, Morgan Heritage. I’ll grab ‘em when House of Blues doesn’t. We’re one of the best kept secrets in the city.
I feel like every day I open I’m giving something back to the community with the music. There may be something in the music that will change somebody’s life, even if they may not know it in everyday walking and everyday living. They may not see it, but I see it. I watch these kids grow up, they start listening to the music, and they grab onto it. I am the only true reggae club in the city. I won’t bring something that’s going to change that positive message. The closest I’ll get is dancehall.
Dancehall is a younger, high-energy crowd. You look how times have changed, times have changed with music. Caperton was here twice. I’m doin’ a little Soka now. I have a Trinidadian DJ right now. There’ve been changes in the city, changes in the crowd. I’ve watched a lot of kids grow. Nothing that’s detrimental to the business though. Reggae just doesn’t get old. I stay strong in the culture, the positive message, stay strong on truth. Any falsehood just gonna run away.
I’ve had some of the hardest people out there in this club with no problems. I don’t have problems with fighting and guns. I have security because you never know. In the city of New Orleans you can get problems in broad daylight, but it’s a nice vibe in the club. I try not to put on a dress code or anything. How can you put a dress code on reggae music? If you want to dress down casual, enjoy yourself. Jeans, tennis shoes, doesn’t matter—you don’t got to be all bougie.