The Devil's music

Baron Samedi as one of the leaders of the revolution in Vodou Nation; and, below, Lunise
The Weekender

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January 2004 should have been early carnival on Haiti, a bravura celebration of the 200th anniversary of independence from France. But instead of fireworks, there was gunfire as rebel soldiers in opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide moved through the countryside of this horribly fated island.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the Oloffson Hotel thronged with foreign journalists and officials.

Once a haunt of Graham Greene, Errol Flynn and jetsetters such as Mick and Bianca Jagger, the grand old hotel regains its excitement now on Thursday nights when the house band, RAM, presents voodoo rock. RAM's leader, the hotel's owner, Richard Morse, is a Haitian-American whose mother introduced Haitian voodoo-dance moves to Martha Graham, the pioneer of modern dance.


Morse is a big man with dreamy eyes and long, greying braids woven with blue ribbons. His voodoo-cowboy, punk-rocker outfits pretty well describe his music. Raised in Connecticut, where his father was a professor at Yale, he played guitar in punk band Groceries until, in 1985, he visited Haiti to explore his roots. "Here's the paradox," he chuckles. "Third-generation Haitian, and I only learn to speak Creole at 28; now I'm singing in it!"

Morse met and married a folk dancer, Lunise, who incorporates voodoo gestures and dance steps into RAM's shows.

In Haiti, voodoo is everywhere - if you know what you are looking at. Locals say Haiti is "85 per cent Catholic and 100 per cent voodoo", but people engage at different levels.

Many simply wear the coloured beads of their chosen loa (deity), or have a shrine at home (loas have specific colours, foods and drinks, drum rhythms and dances). Deeper involvement means attending ceremonies at temples and communing with the spirits of ancestors through sacrifice and possession.

RAM gained renown in the late Eighties when director Jonathan Demme used their wonderfully uplifting song, Ibo Lele, in his film Philadelphia. The musical basis is ra-ra, whose bubbling rhythms and dub-like, bassy notes blasted from long, fluted cornets slide through you like smooth rum, and support Lunise's soulful voice, while Morse's twangy, post-punk guitar adds dramatic edge.

RAM reached Britain in 2001, through the enthusiasm of Jan Ryan, director of UK Arts International. On their closing night, in Bath, the band danced off the stage, through the auditorium, and into the street, playing the big African drums and booming, papier-mâšché cornets to summon the Avon gods.

"That tour made Jan realise that people had no clue where Haiti was and they only knew about the negative things - coups, killings, corruption, voodoo dolls, zombies," says Morse. "She wanted to present something positive about Haiti."

Their show, Vodou Nation, emerged earlier this year, when Ryan flew to Haiti to bring together Morse and South African director Brett Bailey, who works in township theatres, and Trinidadian ethnomusicologist Geraldine Connor. They began work the day the rebels took control of Gonaives, a key town in Haiti, and bullets flew as they auditioned 80 young people and organised a rehearsal schedule.

Ryan managed to leave the country as the coup gathered pace and President Aristide was toppled, but Bailey was trapped for two weeks. The footage he shot on his video camera is joined to studio-produced psychedelic imagery to create a remarkable backdrop for the show, which reaches Hackney Empire next Tuesday for a five-night run.

The tour opened earlier this month in Leeds. Ryan calls it "a psychedelic, tropical-voodoo rock opera". She says: "Rather than presenting it as straight world or pop, I wanted to create a happy hybrid that was edgy and contemporary, that would appeal to younger, clubby audiences."

"And punk rockers!" shouts Morse.

Vodou Nation is a two-act, themed procession of songs and dances, a pageant of Haitian history. Its dazzling costumes and masks are loaded with symbols of voodoo deities. Under the corrugated walls of a shanty house, Morse's electric guitar, keyboards and two long-fluted trumpets face a drummer, congas, and two guys playing waist-high, tapered drums.

At the Oloffson, I witnessed their dizzying rhythms fell two cool young clubbers into a trance. Outside of RAM, the two drummers also play at voodoo ceremonies, including newly legalised voodoo weddings.

Lunise plays Anakaona, poet-queen of pre-Columbus days. She is murdered by colonising Europeans (blancs) and returns as the voodoo goddess, Erzuli Freda. When the blancs drag African slaves from the boats and thrash them in the plantations, Erzuli rescues two brothers and appoints them Leaders of Change.

Ogou, the warrior god, flashes a sword, while Baron Samedi, sporting a top-hat and sequinned codpiece, blows the Conch of Liberty to rally his people in a slave revolution. The jubilant Tout Nayson sees Haiti united and the blancs dispatched, but the new rulers indulge the same greed and cruelty.

The show ends in upbeat mood with the smoochy Met Kolibri, but the future is clouded in Vodou contradictions. "The spirit of optimism," says Morse, mystically, "with the wisdom of hindsight is born."

Haitian voodoo art by Frantz Lamothe is at the October Gallery, WC1 (020 7242 7367) until 31 July.

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