Notes from the Field
On a bright summer Sunday in the 1990s, in New York City, hundreds of Haitians have gathered in Brooklyn's Prospect Park for an informal afternoon. A core group of young men is walking down the park road, playing drums and blowing bamboo tubes, and hundreds of people are dancing after them, singing, drinking, and trying to have a good time. On everyone's mind is the political violence in Haiti. Poor neighborhoods are targeted for brutal beatings, and everyone here has a family member who is missing, hungry, or sick. A song goes up in the crowd: Ogou Badagri, what are you doing? I'm already a warrior, I couldn't sleep." Some of the people singing and dancing here are stuck in New York on unplanned extensions of vacation or business trips because a multinational embargo has sealed off Haiti to passenger travel. They are waiting out the situation" as best they can, mingling with people at a sort of gathering they might have seen only years ago in Haiti. Some wear dreadlocks, sport Malcolm X t-shirts, or carry straw djakout bags over their shoulders, peasant style.
What was this festival? Where did it come from? What was it doing here? The dancing crowds numbered in the hundreds. Young Haitian women stood by, wondering how far to get into singing the betiz that were starting to fly. Older ladies wheeled babies in strollers alongside the parade. This event was free, outdoors, and easy to find. I could tell that for them it felt, smelled, and sounded like home.
There was a lot going on - it looked like Carnival, but it also felt like Vodou. Speaking to the people present, I learned that many did not know a great deal about the history of this parade or its relationship to Vodou, but they nevertheless valued it enormously. The musicians were more knowledgeable - they told me it was a mystical festival, a dangerous festival, and, in Haiti, an old festival. This encounter, minutes from my apartment in Brooklyn's Park Slope, was my first experience of Rara. Before that moment, I had barely heard of the festival. As I began to mill around and get a sense of the scene, I saw that this festival, and the experience of immersing themselves in it in New York, was a precious, emotionally charged celebration for the young men who were its performers. They were throwing themselves into the music and losing themselves, as in a Vodou dance. It seemed like a sense of community solidarity took form in the bodily experience of performing Rara in New York. Seeing all this led me to Haiti to research the present study on the meanings and uses of Rara.
(Excerpted from Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance. University of California Press, 2002, Introduction and Chapter Seven.)