Rara Gender and Sexuality
Analysis

Part of Rara's creativity is in using the bravado of sexual innuendo. Rara bands will usually launch Vodou prayer songs during their morning outings, but somewhere around mid afternoon the cane liquor flows freely, and songs take on an irreverent vulgarity. The humor of innuendo is used in various instances in Haitian culture as a form of Kreyol speech called betiz. In my book, I treat the betiz in Rara as a popular form of speech that reveals certain truths about gender and sexuality in Haiti, truths that can be related to political, economic, and cultural forces. I believe that Rara's betiz songs are as much about order, subordination, exploitation, and dictatorship as they are about gender, sex and sexuality.

I argue that vulgar betiz songs are a form of popular laughter that comprises the only public form of speech possible for the average guy in the Rara. On the most basic level, betiz songs perform the cultural work of affirming not only the existence but also the creative life of a people in the face of insecurity and everyday violence. In times of political repression, when you are not permitted to say anything else, at least you can swear and sing vulgar songs. If you look at these song lyrics in terms of gender there is a whole ethos of masculinity at work in them. But some songs are sung from womens' perspectives, and broadcast women's agendas. For a more in-depth discussion about gender and sexuality, see Chapter Two of Rara!.

You can hear a vulgar Rara song on track 6, "Kwiy Nan Men, M'ap Mande...al Roule Tete."

(Excerpted from Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti. University of California Press, 2002, p. 59-79.)