Rara as a Religious Obligation in Vodou
Analysis

In my book, I argue that while Rara seems like a country Carnival, the festival consists of an outer, secular layer of Carnival "play," that surrounds a protected, secret inner layer of religious "work." Most Rara bands have a lwa (spirit) who serves as its patron in the Afro-Creole religion of Haiti (called Vodou). Often it is the spirit who has asked for the band to be formed, and the Rara is itself a gift to the spirit.

The inner core of Rara leaders is made up of leaders of Vodou societies. They are going about the business of performing serious ritual obligations to the lwa. Rara bands work to "heat up" and activate their instruments, and they perform ceremonies to the spirits. Then, the bands go out to salute important religious sites-graves of ancestors, and trees, rocks, and intersections where other inherited spirits are said to live.

The Rara spirits can sometimes be from the Rada branch, which is historically Dahomean and Yoruba. But most often, they belong to the Petwo branch, which is rooted in the Kongo civilization. The rituals, rhythms, colors, and dances of Rara are close to the Petwo and Kongo rites. The festival is a spiritually "hot" festival, and by necessity takes place mostly outdoors, and not inside the Temple itself. Occasionally, Rara bands will even go to the cemetery to ask permission to capture the spirits of the recently dead-called zombi-and bring them in the Rara to "heat up the band." You can see this request in the short video clip here. This is a very complicated ritual, and calls for sensitive historical analysis that's too much to reprint here. See Chapter Three of Rara! for a longer discussion.

(Excerpted from Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora. University of California Press, 2002, p. 31, 85-90. )