MASTERPIECE (Official Version)

SUPPORT THE FOUNDATION LES FIERS HAÏTIENS >

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A Masterpiece of Art and Hope. 

As Haiti herself is a Masterpiece 
of Liberty and Hope.

- OtherStreams

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Haïti Get Back Up | Ayiti Leve Kanpe | Haiti Levántate | Haiti Releve Toi | Levantai Haiti

Official Version with a  
Special Introduction by Danny Glover.

An 8min time capsule of Haiti, Pre/Post Earthquake!

Jean Jean-Pierre and the  
Dominican Republic Symphonic Orchestra

Conductor: José Antonio Molina

The Dominican Republic National Choir

Conductor: José Enrique Espin

Composer/Producer: Jean Jean-Pierre 

Director: Yvetot Gouin

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"In Memoriam:

A tribute to those who perished on January 12, 2010.

Each and every one of us, who survived the January 12, 2010 earthquake which took the lives of thousands and ravaged several cities in Haiti, has a story to tell. 

Some barely made it. Some were missed by seconds. 

Some made it with missing limbs or/and loved ones.

What, however, binds us all so firmly is a collective responsibility to use this tragedy as a catalyst for change. 

Real change. 

No more business as usual.

We’ve got to make sense out of the deaths of so many folks who only wanted to have a decent life like everyone else around the world.

We must grab this “opportunity” to enhance our circumstances.

The system has failed the people of Haiti for too long. Yes we must rebuild.

No we cannot just rebuild physically for the reconstruction of Haiti cannot be complete without the reinforcement of its citizenry.

We must reshape ourselves.

We must remake ourselves.

But we must all play our parts.

Here’s mine: I want to use my music as an impetus to help implement a national civic and environmental education campaign.

A new Haitian citizen is needed today for Haiti.

Our hands shall embrace our neighbours from the Dominican Republic.

In the aftermath of the worst tragedy that has befallen Haiti, the Dominican Republic was the first country to come to our help. 

The Dominicans did not ask for permission to land nor to cross the border.

Bolstered by a deep sense of gratitude, and armed with my music, I traveled to the Dominican Republic to thank my neighbours.

When I met for the first time Mr. José Rafael Lantigua, the country’s Minister of Culture, he did not hesitate for a second to introduce me to the great conductor and arranger, Maestro Jose Antonio Molina.

This is what we did together."

J e a n - J e a n   P i e r r e

This is not a Post. It is a Gift! [ ♪ ♫ ♪ ]

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Go to Original (SF Gate) >

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The "This is Haiti" public service announcements
can be heard at www.greenff.org/
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"Alan Lomax In Haiti" box set: thehaitibox.blogspot.com/
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1930s recordings preserve 

Haiti's cultural wealth

By JENNIFER KAY, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

(02-24) 04:00 PST MIAMI, (AP) --

 
At 21, Alan Lomax went to Haiti and recorded its citizens making music — songs about Voodoo, carnival politics, children's games and the first airplanes crisscrossing its Caribbean skies in the late 1930s.

He preserved the sounds on aluminum discs for the Library of Congress, but they were largely forgotten for seven decades as they sat in the library's archives.

Recently discovered, they were compiled into a box set released last fall. Haitian music scholars called it a "cultural archive" that documents the daily triumphs that get missed whenever a crisis in Haiti makes the news.

The catastrophic earthquake last month that killed more than 200,000 people was the latest crisis.

Now, the set's curator hopes "Alan Lomax in Haiti" will teach people that Haiti's culture remains intact, even when so many of its arts institutions have collapsed.

Music from the 10-disc box set, released by Harte Recordings, is featured in three radio public service announcements seeking aid for Haiti.

"It's too easy for people to just periodically feel sorry for Haiti," Gage Averill said. "Very few people except those who travel to Haiti understand just how much Haiti has to offer, how lovely a country it is, how generous a country it is."

Lomax was a newlywed ethnomusicologist when he set out to record the music of Haiti in 1936 and 1937, just following a 15-year American military occupation of Haiti.

He lugged his equipment into the mountains beyond the capital, Port-au-Prince, in search of ordinary people instead of polished performers and ended up with 1,500 recordings.

Ultimately, digital copies will be returned to Haiti, as some of Lomax's recordings from other Caribbean countries have been returned to those islands.

He found a wide range of music, from Boy Scout troops, religious processions, dances and bands of sugar cane cutters who brought back rhythms from Cuba.

Many of the Haitian Creole lyrics convey the impact of poverty and life in close quarters.

There also are songs about Haiti's global isolation after its slave rebellion and French ballads.

"The French romances (ballads) are not about courtly affairs and knights, but about the first time someone saw an airplane," Averill said.

When the earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, the box set's collaborators looked for a way to use the music to help the relief effort.

It could show a different picture of Haiti than just a country of rubble; it also could immediately restore something that was lost, they thought.

"My feeling was, at a time like this, people don't just think of bread and water all the time," Lomax's daughter, Anna Lomax Wood, said. "They think of everything that is jeopardized in their lives — everything in their culture."

Actor Fisher Stevens and Kimberly Green, president of the Miami-based Green Family Foundation, produced the radio PSAs.

Like other urgent appeals for donations after the earthquake, they feature celebrities — Naomi Watts, Ben Stiller and Sting — seeking pledges to The Clinton Foundation and Partners in Health.

"This is Haiti," the celebrities say over three music clips selected from the box set.

They note the country's stature as the first black republic in the world after a slave rebellion succeeded in 1804, then its proximity to the United States.

Only in closing do they note Haiti's poverty and previous disasters.

The three songs selected for the PSAs share a sense of danger, Averill said.

In each, the singers call out to the gods for help, but they also prepare to take matters into their own hands if an adversary comes to close.

In a carnival song, a community girds itself against an unseen adversary.

A song from a Voodoo ceremony implores the gods to soothe some trauma and relieve the singers' agony.

Lastly, in a procession of sacred music, the band honors a particular supporter with a refrain that's still familiar, more than 70 years after it was recorded.

The refrain of one song indicates some beliefs have not changed much since Lomax's time. "After God, the priest,"   a rara band sings, honoring the entities they considered supportive. After the earthquake, some Haitians uttered a similar refrain, describing the entities most likely to help them: "After God, the United Nations."

Green said she hopes to broadcast Lomax's recordings on Haitian radio stations as they come back on the air, to inspire the preservation of culture even if museums and concert halls won't be rebuilt for years.

"I hope it can provide some solace to people, some strength," Lomax Wood said.
 

------------------------------------------------
Go to Original (SF Gate) >
------------------------------------------------
The "This is Haiti" public service announcements
can be heard at www.greenff.org/
------------------------------------------------
"Alan Lomax In Haiti" box set: thehaitibox.blogspot.com/
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