After the devastating effects of January’s earthquake in Haiti, two very different fundraising musical projects sprang to life.
One was a big-budget production full of pop stars that reached No 1 in the United Kingdom. The other was a small-scale affair, knocked together from tapes gathering dust in a bedroom; it featured Haitians drumming and chanting. Called Haiti Vodou: The Voodoo Drums of Haiti, it’s a world away from Simon Cowell’s Everybody Hurts project. And the music isn’t just thrilling, it paints a picture of an extraordinary country. (There are other charity projects out there, but none that contrasts as powerfully as these two.)
“It’s fantastic that Cowell raised millions,” says Cardiff-based singer-songwriter Christopher Rees, who put Haiti Vodou together. “But the song he chose was full of pity. There is a resilience in these people that not many people know about.”
For the past 15 years, Rees has played his folk- and blues-inspired songs around the world, touring with musicians such as John Cale and Kristin Hersh. In October 2002, courtesy of Welsh educational charity The Haiti Fund, Rees spent six weeks travelling around the schools of Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien, using music as a teaching tool. “These children were horribly poor. The resources — even then — were nonexistent, but they were so responsive. They loved rhythm games and picked up melodies straightaway. It made me realise how much music was part of their lives.”
Rees and his colleague, Steve Garrett, decided to find out more about Haiti’s music. Having heard 1930s field recordings made by US folklorist Alan Lomax, they knew what voodoo drumming and chanting was: an intense musical incantation designed to be spiritually uplifting, all-conquering, even.
They also knew voodoo, a traditional African religion that spread to Haiti through the slave trade, was one of the world’s oldest religions, between 6 000 and 10 000 years old. They wanted to find out if this music still existed, especially as US hip-hop and R&B dominated Haitian radio.
They found and went to four ceremonies. “The first was in a local hall in the afternoon. It was simple and sophisticated. The last was in the woods at night — and it went on for five hours!” At the first, a group called Beau Flamme played polished music with bamboo horns. At the last, the two men watched a priest spray rum into the mouths of the congregation.
Later, he produced a machete and swung it at chunks of concrete. Was it a huge culture shock? “Of course,” says Rees. “We were filled with trepidation, then we realised our prejudices came from clichés in Hollywood films.” Even though Garrett and Rees were the only white people at the ceremonies, they were always welcomed and allowed to record without question.
Rees recorded 15 tracks for the album, using only a simple stereo microphone, and says the complexity of the rhythms astonished him; they sounded far more intense than similar music from West Africa. A drummer would kick off the ceremony, standing up and using a stick to define the beat, before other drummers joined him. Then new time signatures and textures would find their way in.
“The music had the intensity of drum ‘n bass, but the people would dance calmly to it, as if they were totally at ease. Then something would suddenly move them, as if they were connecting to a communal heartbeat. For that to still exist in that form shows its intensity.”
On his return to the UK, Rees wanted to release the recordings, but finding the right good cause proved complicated. Over the past few weeks, he has produced Haiti Vodou in his own time and on his own label, with 100% of the profits to go to the Disasters Emergency Committee and the Haiti Fund in Wales.
Rees hopes Haiti Vodou will bring new aid for the country as interest in the recovery programme starts to wane in the international press. After all, he says, helping the Haitian people doesn’t stop with Everybody Hurts.
“I’m proud that music by Haitian people, about their determination to survive, can now help them help themselves.” —