The island nation was discovering the roots of its rural culture in Africa, struggling to reconcile the class and race issues arising from a mixed French, Spanish and African heritage, and the cosmopolitan urban culture and folk traditions of the rural poor. Lomax, too, was coming of age in his first solo venture in ethnography, while wrestling with emotional uncertainty, romantic longing, technical challenges, sickness, and financial woes. Harte Recordings will release Alan Lomax in Haiti (obviously this happened last year -- as Vaquero was commissioned to write a piece about it, we spent many weeks working through all the contents), a 10-CD audio and video box set that reveals for the first time the musical and cultural fruits of that national and personal struggle.The Danse Martinique clip is from the massive Caribbean film and audio recording focused primarily on Haiti that Alan Lomax conducted in the 1930's. These same pattern dance forms and drum accompaniment we saw in the French Caribbean a couple of summers ago. Though now the performers were much more prosperously dressed -- yet, again, the same patterns of clothing too.
I'd have embedded it, but for some reason the code plays without you having a choice about it. This may not be desireable or wanted by someone casually surfing their friendly blogs.
Film - audio clips and more information here on the Cultural Equality site.
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