LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

After the Quake: Music, Politics, and Spirituality in Haiti

The final program in el V's HipDeep series that investigates the historical, political, cultural and spiritual elements in Angola - old Kongo, and the diaspora into the New World has been created.

This program focues on San Domingue in the past, and Haiti, as it was called, after the slave revolution.  Though program is centered after the terrible earthquake, it is not about the quake or rebuilding, particularly.  It's a wild, high velocity, high energy, fast moving show dealing with vodou and the music and culture, and how these both bleed into the political situation and are repressed by it. Among other things you will learn what a real zombie is, what it signifies. You can hear it here.


For this exclusive Afropop Worldwide Hip Deep report, producer Ned Sublette travels to Port-au-Prince, where he checks in with bandleader Richard Morse of RAM, and with Lolo and ManzĂ© Beaubrun of Boukman Eksperyans, both of whom produced hotly controversial carnival songs this year. In a country where the president, Michel Martelly, was formerly the Tags – 1 dance-music singer, the complexities of politics are felt in music. We'll look at how vodou and carnival interact to provide a vocabulary for political expression in the tense post-quake atmosphere. We’ll meet 95-year-old Emerante de Pradines Morse, who was the first singer to perform the songs of vodou as entertainment in Port-au-Prince; we’ll hear from historian Laurent Dubois, author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History; and we’ll go crowd-surfing in the crush of carnival at Jakmel, the southern Haitian port city that was once a colonial cousin to New Orleans. Produced with support from a Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion, a program of the University of Southern California's Knight Chair in Media and Religion.
This is long series in every way: long dreamed of;  long envisioned, long struggled to make possible; long in creation.  And here it is, fulled realized, created, and concluded!

Congratulations Mr. Sublette!

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