RAM (band)
Encyclopedia
RAM is a mizik rasin
band based in the city of Port-au-Prince
, Haiti
. The band derives its name from the initials of its founder, songwriter, and lead male vocalist, Richard A. Morse
. The band's music has been described by Morse as "Vodou rock 'n' roots", and has been one of the prominent bands in the mizik rasin musical movement in Haiti. RAM began performing together in 1990
, and recorded their first album in 1996
. The band's music incorporates traditional Vodou lyrics and instruments, such as rara
horns and petwo
drums, into modern rock and roll
. The band's songs include lyrics in Kréyòl
, French
, and English
.
RAM is famous for its regular Thursday night performances at the Hotel Oloffson
in downtown Port-au-Prince, attended by hotel guests and a wide spectrum of the country's political and racial groups. During the years of the military junta
of Raoul Cédras
, one of the band's singles, "Fèy
", was banned nationwide by the military authorities who perceived it to be a song of support for the exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
. The band continued to play weekly concerts in defiance of death threats from the regime until Morse only narrowly escaped a kidnapping from the hotel in 1994. The band began recording albums in 1996, after United States
military intervention restored Aristide to power. In 1998, the band clashed with the newly elected mayor of Port-au-Prince, a supporter of Aristide, and survived an assassination
attempt during their Carnival
performance. Through its song lyrics, RAM continues to provoke the antagonism of both the supporters of Aristide and former military regimes.
Morse was born in Puerto Rico
, but grew up in the town of Woodbridge, Connecticut
in the United States
. His father, Richard M. Morse
, was an American academic sociologist
and author
, and his mother was a famous Haitian singer, Emerante de Pradine. Morse graduated from Princeton University
in 1979 with a degree in anthropology
. He joined a band in New York City
, called The Groceries, that played New Wave
and punk rock
music with Caribbean
musical style elements.
1985 was a turning point in Morse's life. He was dating a woman whose father strongly disapproved of his daughter dating a musician, and he had a falling out with his fellow band members over musical differences. A conversation with a French record producer persuaded Morse to start over and move to Port-au-Prince to better explore Haitian and Caribbean music. In 1987, he signed a 15 year lease to manage the Hotel Oloffson, then in near ruins and the inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene
's famous 1966 novel The Comedians
. In restoring the hotel business, Morse hired a local folkloric dance troupe and slowly converted it into a band.
thet also have this.
Morse and the band began experimenting with the new sounds of rasin music. One of the most important musical movements that swept Haiti in the years following the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier
, mizik rasin, or simply rasin, combines elements of traditional Vodou ceremonical and folkloric music with rock and roll
. The ancient drum rhythms of former Africa
n slaves
combined with the beat of American rock and roll was a perfect combination for the musical background of Morse. The Hotel Olofsson was also a perfect venue for rehearsals and performances. When not on tour elsewhere in the country, RAM began playing a regular performance every Thursday night at the hotel.
, frequently met with persecution from the regime. During Carnival in Port-au-Prince in 1992, RAM was ordered by the regime to perform on the Champs du Mars, a large open park in the center of the city. The regime was determined to have a rasin band playing during Carnival to lend an air of normalcy to the event. Before a crowd of over 10,000 people, the band sang an old folk ballad with the refrain "Kote moun yo? Pa wè moun yo." ("Where are the people? We do not see them.") When they realized the song was a parable about the exiled president-elect Aristide, uniformed soldiers cut off electricity to the stage. The junta hesitated to arrest or physically harm the band, however, as RAM's existence was useful for presenting an appearance of legitimacy to the outside world, and because Morse was a United States citizen
.
First performed during that same Carnival concert in 1992, RAM began regularly playing a song entitled "Fèy
", the Kréyòl word for "leaf". The lyrics for the song were of Vodou folkloric origins, adapted to rasin music. Despite no overt references to the political situation, it was widely played on the radio and immediately taken up throughout the country as an unofficial anthem of support for Aristide. By the summer of 1992, playing or singing the song was banned
under military authority, and Morse was subjected to death threats from the regime. In one particular instance, Morse was summoned before Evans François, the brother of Colonel Michel François
, who told Morse that any number of assassins
would be willing to kill him for as little as fifty cents in payment. Nevertheless, the band continued to play "Fèy" live at their weekly concerts at the Oloffson. The band would later document the François death threat in the mixed-language ballad "Gran Bwa", released in 1997 on their second album, Puritan Vodou.
The band first made the world scene in 1993, when one of its most popular singles, "Ibo Lele (Dreams Come True)", a song with both English and Kréyòl lyrics, was included in the soundtrack for the major motion picture Philadelphia
, next to famous musicians including Bruce Springsteen
and Neil Young
. The song was later re-released on RAM's first album, Aïbobo, in 1996. This new-found success overseas did not, however, translate to security at home. By April 1994, the band had to finish rehearsals before dark so that band members heading home could cross an open area in the city center known as "The Frontier" without too much risk of random violence.
One of the most dangerous moments for the band and for Morse personally occurred on September 8, 1994. RAM was performing their regular Thursday night concert at the Hotel Oloffson. One of the audience members was a military officer who had attended several other RAM performances, including one at a club called The Garage in Pétionville
at which he explicitly permitted the band to play "Fèy". During the September 8 concert, however, when the band began to play "Fèy", this officer decided to enforce the ban on the song and ordered RAM to stop playing it. While the band played on, Morse was physically being carried out of the hotel by armed men. Using a wireless microphone, he sang in a verse in Kréyòl that was not in the song, "Kadja bosou a ye ma prale" - a prayer to the Vodou loa
to grant him safe passage. His kidnappers released him and took another captive instead. Concerned about the safety of their fans, the band ceased performing for several weeks.
Throughout the political upheaval of Haiti in the 1990s, RAM's regular Thursday evening performance at the Hotel Oloffson was one of the few regular social events in Port-au-Prince in which individuals of various political positions and allegiances could congregate. Regular attendees of the performances included foreign guests at the hotel, members of the military, paramilitary attachés
and former Tonton Macoute
s, members of the press
, diplomats
, foreign aid worker
s, artist
s, and businessmen
. Attendees included both black Haitians and members of the nation's less populous racial groups. Until September 19, 1994, when U.S. military troops arrived to oust the Cédras regime, the performances at the Oloffson offered a unique situation for all parties involved and helped sustain the band, despite its confrontations with the junta, in a period when many other artists either fled the country, were persecuted, or killed.
. Aristide aides approached the band to first request songs favorable to the government and later threaten the band when Morse refused. In 1998, Manno Charlemagne
, the newly-elected Fanmi Lavalas mayor of Port-au-Prince and himself an accomplished professional musician who had lived in exile during the Cédras junta, sent armed men to the Oloffson. They dismantled the float
on which RAM was scheduled to perform in the upcoming annual Carnival on February 24. The mayor had taken offense to the lyrics of one of the band's songs, which he interpreted as an accusation of corruption. After the destruction of the float, the band was told they would be allowed to perform on a flatbed truck. However, the brakes on the truck were sabotaged and during the Carnival procession, the truck swerved into the crowd, killing eight and forcing the members of the band to flee for their lives. In 2000, Morse stated in an interview that "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
When not touring elsewhere in Haiti or abroad, RAM continued to play its regular weekly concerts at the Hotel Oloffson throughout the 2000s. In 2002, the band released a third album, Kite Yo Pale, whose title translates to "Let Them Talk" in English. A 2003 release, MadiGra, was a "greatest hits" compilation of songs from the three previous albums. A fifth album, with a French language
title, Le Jardin ("The Garden" in English), also released in 2003, contains mostly new material, some of which is considered critical of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas. Aristide departed the country on February 29, 2004, after months of protest and political violence. Despite Morse's comments to the press and the band's famous rivalry with Manno Charlemagne, RAM was nevertheless still associated with its past support for Aristide and Lavalas and its opposition to the previous military junta. On November 4, 2004, three members of the band were illegally detained by uniformed Haitian police during RAM's weekly Thursday night performance. The three band members all lived in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood where support for Aristide was reportedly strong. Caught in the middle, RAM continues to draw the ire of both Aristide supporters and the supporters of past military governments.
RAM is expected to release a sixth album in the summer of 2006, which is reported to include a single entitled "Jamaican Vacation", a song about Jean-Bertrand Aristide's 2004 exile from Haiti that included a stop in Jamaica
.
, the government appropriated for itself the authority of the Vodou religious traditions and made extensive use of religious leaders and traditions to assert its brutal authority and impose order over the population. When Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country, a widespread dechoukaj
uprooted the most oppressive elements of the former regime and liberated the Vodou religion from its entanglements with the government. Unable to do so under the Duvaliers, musicians were eager to adopt traditional Vodou folk music rhythms, lyrics, and instrumentation into a new sound that incorporated elements of rock and roll and American pop music
. This style of modern music reaching back to the roots of Vodou tradition came to be called mizik rasin in Kréyòl or musique racine in French.
The Hotel Oloffson was one of the early concert venues for rasin bands and performers beginning in 1987. Rasin bands incorporated not only traditional Vodou folk music lyrics and rhythms into modern musical style, but included petwo drums and rara horns, instruments used in Vodou religious ceremonies. When Morse gathered together dancers and musicians to create RAM in 1990, the rasin style was popular in Port-au-Prince and gaining popularity in the rest of the country. "Ke'm Pa Sote" by Boukman Eksperyans
, whose song title translates to "I Am Not Afraid" in English, was the most popular song at the 1990 Carnival in Port-au-Prince. It was widely understood to be a criticism of the corrupt military government of General Prosper Avril
. RAM adopted a similar format and together with Boukman Eksperyans and other rasin bands developed the style and genre of protest music grounded in Vodou musical tradition. Eventually, Richard Morse became so involved in the Vodou religion through his music that he was initiated as a houngan
, or Vodou priest, in 2002. Describing a RAM concert, Morse explains, "Yes, you might see our dancers go into a trance. Some get possessed by the loas, to the rhythm of the drums, but it's a natural state when it happens. You can't fake it."
The musical style of RAM combines Vodou rhythms with rock and roll, but also includes influences from the blues
, funk music
, and occasional riffs from The Clash
. Elements of other Haitian and Caribbean musical traditions, such as kompa
, find their way into the music as well. The lyrics are a mixture of English, Kréyòl, and French, and many of the songs are narratives of the personal experiences of the band, or social commentary on current events in Haiti. "Boat People Blues" on the album Puritan Vodou, for example, offers a lament for the refugees who fled Haiti following the 1991 coup d'état
. On the same album, "Ayizan", describes the final conversation between Morse and his friend, the artist Stevenson Magloire
, the day before Magloire was stoned to death in the street by paramilitary
attachés. The band's popularity in Haiti stems in part from this challenge to authority, known as "voye pwen" or "sending a point." As one Port-au-Prince resident has said of Morse and the band, "I love his music. He tells what's real, what's going on, like Bob Marley
."
, starring Tom Hanks
and Denzel Washington
.
Mizik rasin
Rasin is a musical movement that began in Haïti in 1987 when musicians began combining elements of traditional Haïtian vodou ceremonical and folkloric music with rock and roll. This style of modern music reaching back to the roots of vodou tradition came to be called mizik rasin in Kreyòl or...
band based in the city of Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince is the capital and largest city of the Caribbean nation of Haiti. The city's population was 704,776 as of the 2003 census, and was officially estimated to have reached 897,859 in 2009....
, Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
. The band derives its name from the initials of its founder, songwriter, and lead male vocalist, Richard A. Morse
Richard Auguste Morse
Richard Auguste Morse is a Puerto Rican-born Haitian-American musician and hotel manager currently residing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Morse manages the Hotel Oloffson, and is the founder of a mizik rasin band, RAM, named after his initials. Morse is married to the band's lead female vocalist,...
. The band's music has been described by Morse as "Vodou rock 'n' roots", and has been one of the prominent bands in the mizik rasin musical movement in Haiti. RAM began performing together in 1990
1990 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1990.-Events:*January 21 – MTV's Unplugged premieres on cable television with British band Squeeze...
, and recorded their first album in 1996
1996 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1996.-January:* January – At the trial of two American teenagers, Nicholaus McDonald and Brian Bassett, for the murder of Bassett's parents and young brother, defense lawyers attempt to lay the blame for the murders on the fact...
. The band's music incorporates traditional Vodou lyrics and instruments, such as rara
Rara
Originating in Haïti, rara is a form of festival music used for street processions, typically during Easter Week. The music centers on a set of cylindrical bamboo trumpets called vaksen , but also features drums, maracas, güiras or güiros , and metal bells, as well as sometimes also cylindrical...
horns and petwo
Petwo
The Petwo are a family of loa in Haitian Vodou religion. The story is that they originated in Haiti, under the harsh conditions of slavery. The term petwo can also refer to a drum used in the music of Haiti...
drums, into modern rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. The band's songs include lyrics in Kréyòl
Haitian Creole language
Haitian Creole language , often called simply Creole or Kreyòl, is a language spoken in Haiti by about twelve million people, which includes all Haitians in Haiti and via emigration, by about two to three million speakers residing in the Bahamas, Cuba, Canada, France, Cayman Islands, French...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
RAM is famous for its regular Thursday night performances at the Hotel Oloffson
Hotel Oloffson
The Hotel Oloffson is an inn in central Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The main structure of the hotel is a 19th century Gothic gingerbread mansion set in a lush tropical garden. The mansion was built as a residence for the powerful Sam family, including two former presidents of Haiti...
in downtown Port-au-Prince, attended by hotel guests and a wide spectrum of the country's political and racial groups. During the years of the military junta
Military junta
A junta or military junta is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term derives from the Spanish language junta meaning committee, specifically a board of directors...
of Raoul Cédras
Raoul Cédras
Raoul Cédras is a former military officer, and was de facto ruler of Haiti from 1991 to 1994.-Background:Cédras was educated in the United States and was a member of the US-trained Leopard Corps...
, one of the band's singles, "Fèy
Fèy
"Fèy" is a traditional vodou folk song in Haïti. In Kréyòl, "fèy" means "leaf", and the lyrics of the song describe a leaf falling from a tree. Like many traditional songs in vodou folklore, the lyrics of "Fèy" can hold many meanings, both religious and political. At least two mizik rasin bands...
", was banned nationwide by the military authorities who perceived it to be a song of support for the exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a Haitian former Catholic priest and politician who served as Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies...
. The band continued to play weekly concerts in defiance of death threats from the regime until Morse only narrowly escaped a kidnapping from the hotel in 1994. The band began recording albums in 1996, after United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
military intervention restored Aristide to power. In 1998, the band clashed with the newly elected mayor of Port-au-Prince, a supporter of Aristide, and survived an assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
attempt during their Carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
performance. Through its song lyrics, RAM continues to provoke the antagonism of both the supporters of Aristide and former military regimes.
History
RAM was formally created in 1990 by Richard A. Morse, his wife Lunise, and a group of folkloric musicians and dancers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Richard would become the songwriter and lead male vocalist. Lunise became the lead female vocalist. The other band members were all recruited from Port-au-Prince, including some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. The name of band, RAM, comes from Morse's initials.Morse was born in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
, but grew up in the town of Woodbridge, Connecticut
Woodbridge, Connecticut
Woodbridge is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,983 at the 2000 census. It is one of the wealthiest towns in Connecticut, ranking 16th in the state in terms of per capita income, and is home to many of the faculty of Yale University...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. His father, Richard M. Morse
Richard McGee Morse
Richard "Dick" McGee Morse, Ph.D. was a Latin Americanist scholar and professor at Columbia University, University of Puerto Rico, Yale University and Stanford University before finishing his career at the Wilson Center in Washington DC.Morse was born in Summit, New Jersey, United States, but...
, was an American academic sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and his mother was a famous Haitian singer, Emerante de Pradine. Morse graduated from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1979 with a degree in anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
. He joined a band in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, called The Groceries, that played New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
and punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
music with Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
musical style elements.
1985 was a turning point in Morse's life. He was dating a woman whose father strongly disapproved of his daughter dating a musician, and he had a falling out with his fellow band members over musical differences. A conversation with a French record producer persuaded Morse to start over and move to Port-au-Prince to better explore Haitian and Caribbean music. In 1987, he signed a 15 year lease to manage the Hotel Oloffson, then in near ruins and the inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
's famous 1966 novel The Comedians
The Comedians (novel)
The Comedians is a novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1966. Set in Haiti under the rule of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoute, The Comedians tells the story of a tired hotel owner, Brown, and his increasing fatalism as he watches Haiti descend into...
. In restoring the hotel business, Morse hired a local folkloric dance troupe and slowly converted it into a band.
thet also have this.
Morse and the band began experimenting with the new sounds of rasin music. One of the most important musical movements that swept Haiti in the years following the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier
Jean-Claude Duvalier
Jean-Claude Duvalier, nicknamed "Bébé Doc" or "Baby Doc" was the President of Haiti from 1971 until his overthrow by a popular uprising in 1986. He succeeded his father, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, as the ruler of Haiti upon his father's death in 1971...
, mizik rasin, or simply rasin, combines elements of traditional Vodou ceremonical and folkloric music with rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. The ancient drum rhythms of former Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n slaves
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
combined with the beat of American rock and roll was a perfect combination for the musical background of Morse. The Hotel Olofsson was also a perfect venue for rehearsals and performances. When not on tour elsewhere in the country, RAM began playing a regular performance every Thursday night at the hotel.
The Junta Years: 1991-1994
Many times during its history, the band has become intimately involved in Haitian politics. During the years of the military junta led by Raoul Cédras from 1991 to 1994, provocative music and art thought to have hidden messages of support for Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his political party, LavalasLavalas
Lavalas, the Kréyòl word for "avalanche", may refer to:* The Lavalas Political Organization in Haiti, founded in 1991 by Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his supporters, later part of the Struggling People's Party...
, frequently met with persecution from the regime. During Carnival in Port-au-Prince in 1992, RAM was ordered by the regime to perform on the Champs du Mars, a large open park in the center of the city. The regime was determined to have a rasin band playing during Carnival to lend an air of normalcy to the event. Before a crowd of over 10,000 people, the band sang an old folk ballad with the refrain "Kote moun yo? Pa wè moun yo." ("Where are the people? We do not see them.") When they realized the song was a parable about the exiled president-elect Aristide, uniformed soldiers cut off electricity to the stage. The junta hesitated to arrest or physically harm the band, however, as RAM's existence was useful for presenting an appearance of legitimacy to the outside world, and because Morse was a United States citizen
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
.
First performed during that same Carnival concert in 1992, RAM began regularly playing a song entitled "Fèy
Fèy
"Fèy" is a traditional vodou folk song in Haïti. In Kréyòl, "fèy" means "leaf", and the lyrics of the song describe a leaf falling from a tree. Like many traditional songs in vodou folklore, the lyrics of "Fèy" can hold many meanings, both religious and political. At least two mizik rasin bands...
", the Kréyòl word for "leaf". The lyrics for the song were of Vodou folkloric origins, adapted to rasin music. Despite no overt references to the political situation, it was widely played on the radio and immediately taken up throughout the country as an unofficial anthem of support for Aristide. By the summer of 1992, playing or singing the song was banned
Censorship of music
Censorship of music is the practice of restricting free access to musical works. This censorship may stem from a wide variety of motivations, including moral, political, military or religious reasons. Censorship can range from the complete government-enforced legal prohibition of a musical work, to...
under military authority, and Morse was subjected to death threats from the regime. In one particular instance, Morse was summoned before Evans François, the brother of Colonel Michel François
Michel François
Joseph-Michel François was a colonel in the Haitian army. As Haiti Chief of National Police he participated in the 1991 Haitian coup d'état, which overthrew Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The Haitian Presidential candidate Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly is known to have...
, who told Morse that any number of assassins
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
would be willing to kill him for as little as fifty cents in payment. Nevertheless, the band continued to play "Fèy" live at their weekly concerts at the Oloffson. The band would later document the François death threat in the mixed-language ballad "Gran Bwa", released in 1997 on their second album, Puritan Vodou.
The band first made the world scene in 1993, when one of its most popular singles, "Ibo Lele (Dreams Come True)", a song with both English and Kréyòl lyrics, was included in the soundtrack for the major motion picture Philadelphia
Philadelphia (film)
Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film that was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme. The film stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington...
, next to famous musicians including Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
and Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
. The song was later re-released on RAM's first album, Aïbobo, in 1996. This new-found success overseas did not, however, translate to security at home. By April 1994, the band had to finish rehearsals before dark so that band members heading home could cross an open area in the city center known as "The Frontier" without too much risk of random violence.
One of the most dangerous moments for the band and for Morse personally occurred on September 8, 1994. RAM was performing their regular Thursday night concert at the Hotel Oloffson. One of the audience members was a military officer who had attended several other RAM performances, including one at a club called The Garage in Pétionville
Pétionville
Pétion-Ville is a commune and a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the hills east and separate of the city itself on the northern hills of the Massif de la Selle. It was named after Alexandre Sabès Pétion , the Haitian general and president later recognized as one of the country's four founding...
at which he explicitly permitted the band to play "Fèy". During the September 8 concert, however, when the band began to play "Fèy", this officer decided to enforce the ban on the song and ordered RAM to stop playing it. While the band played on, Morse was physically being carried out of the hotel by armed men. Using a wireless microphone, he sang in a verse in Kréyòl that was not in the song, "Kadja bosou a ye ma prale" - a prayer to the Vodou loa
Loa
The Loa are the spirits of the voodoo religion practiced in Louisiana, Haiti, Benin, and other parts of the world. They are also referred to as Mystères and the Invisibles, in which are intermediaries between Bondye —the Creator, who is distant from the world—and humanity...
to grant him safe passage. His kidnappers released him and took another captive instead. Concerned about the safety of their fans, the band ceased performing for several weeks.
Throughout the political upheaval of Haiti in the 1990s, RAM's regular Thursday evening performance at the Hotel Oloffson was one of the few regular social events in Port-au-Prince in which individuals of various political positions and allegiances could congregate. Regular attendees of the performances included foreign guests at the hotel, members of the military, paramilitary attachés
Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haïti
The Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti was a far-rightparamilitary group organized in mid-1993. Its goal was to undermine support for the popular Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who served less than eight months as Haïti's president before being deposed, on 29 September 1991,...
and former Tonton Macoute
Tonton Macoute
Tonton Macoutes was a Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by President François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier. In 1970, the militia was officially renamed the Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale .Haitians called this force the “Tonton Macoutes,” after the Haitian Creole mythological...
s, members of the press
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, diplomats
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
, foreign aid worker
Humanitarian aid
Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disaster and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity...
s, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s, and businessmen
Businessperson
A businessperson is someone involved in a particular undertaking of activities for the purpose of generating revenue from a combination of human, financial, or physical capital. An entrepreneur is an example of a business person...
. Attendees included both black Haitians and members of the nation's less populous racial groups. Until September 19, 1994, when U.S. military troops arrived to oust the Cédras regime, the performances at the Oloffson offered a unique situation for all parties involved and helped sustain the band, despite its confrontations with the junta, in a period when many other artists either fled the country, were persecuted, or killed.
After the Regime: 1994-2004
Although the band supported Aristide and Lavalas during the years of the Cédras regime, like many other Haitians, Morse began to grow disillusioned with the nation's president and his new political party, Fanmi LavalasFanmi Lavalas
Fanmi Lavalas is a leftist political party in Haiti. Its leader is former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It has been a powerful force in Haitian politics since 1991. Fanmi Lavalas governments supported a policy of "growth with equity" based on Caribbean and Western European social...
. Aristide aides approached the band to first request songs favorable to the government and later threaten the band when Morse refused. In 1998, Manno Charlemagne
Manno Charlemagne
Manno Charlemagne, born 1948, is a Haitian political folk singer, songwriter and acoustic guitarist, lifelong political activist and former politician. He recorded his political chansons in both French and in Creole. He lived abroad in exile twice, both during the 1980s and again during the years...
, the newly-elected Fanmi Lavalas mayor of Port-au-Prince and himself an accomplished professional musician who had lived in exile during the Cédras junta, sent armed men to the Oloffson. They dismantled the float
Float (parade)
A float is a decorated platform, either built on a vehicle or towed behind one, which is a component of many festive parades, such as those of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the Carnival of Viareggio, the Maltese Carnival, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Key West Fantasy Fest parade, the...
on which RAM was scheduled to perform in the upcoming annual Carnival on February 24. The mayor had taken offense to the lyrics of one of the band's songs, which he interpreted as an accusation of corruption. After the destruction of the float, the band was told they would be allowed to perform on a flatbed truck. However, the brakes on the truck were sabotaged and during the Carnival procession, the truck swerved into the crowd, killing eight and forcing the members of the band to flee for their lives. In 2000, Morse stated in an interview that "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
When not touring elsewhere in Haiti or abroad, RAM continued to play its regular weekly concerts at the Hotel Oloffson throughout the 2000s. In 2002, the band released a third album, Kite Yo Pale, whose title translates to "Let Them Talk" in English. A 2003 release, MadiGra, was a "greatest hits" compilation of songs from the three previous albums. A fifth album, with a French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
title, Le Jardin ("The Garden" in English), also released in 2003, contains mostly new material, some of which is considered critical of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas. Aristide departed the country on February 29, 2004, after months of protest and political violence. Despite Morse's comments to the press and the band's famous rivalry with Manno Charlemagne, RAM was nevertheless still associated with its past support for Aristide and Lavalas and its opposition to the previous military junta. On November 4, 2004, three members of the band were illegally detained by uniformed Haitian police during RAM's weekly Thursday night performance. The three band members all lived in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood where support for Aristide was reportedly strong. Caught in the middle, RAM continues to draw the ire of both Aristide supporters and the supporters of past military governments.
RAM is expected to release a sixth album in the summer of 2006, which is reported to include a single entitled "Jamaican Vacation", a song about Jean-Bertrand Aristide's 2004 exile from Haiti that included a stop in Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
.
Musical style
Richard Morse describes the band's musical style as "Vodou rock and roots". The mizik rasin movement began soon after the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1987. Under the regimes of Jean-Claude and his father, François DuvalierFrançois Duvalier
François Duvalier was the President of Haiti from 1957 until his death in 1971. Duvalier first won acclaim in fighting diseases, earning him the nickname "Papa Doc" . He opposed a military coup d'état in 1950, and was elected President in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform...
, the government appropriated for itself the authority of the Vodou religious traditions and made extensive use of religious leaders and traditions to assert its brutal authority and impose order over the population. When Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country, a widespread dechoukaj
Dechoukaj
Dechoukaj is a Kréyòl term that literally means "uprooting". It is used primarily to refer to the political upheaval in Haiti following the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier on February 7, 1986. During the dechoukaj many ordinary Haitian peasants and city dwellers exacted revenge on their...
uprooted the most oppressive elements of the former regime and liberated the Vodou religion from its entanglements with the government. Unable to do so under the Duvaliers, musicians were eager to adopt traditional Vodou folk music rhythms, lyrics, and instrumentation into a new sound that incorporated elements of rock and roll and American pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
. This style of modern music reaching back to the roots of Vodou tradition came to be called mizik rasin in Kréyòl or musique racine in French.
The Hotel Oloffson was one of the early concert venues for rasin bands and performers beginning in 1987. Rasin bands incorporated not only traditional Vodou folk music lyrics and rhythms into modern musical style, but included petwo drums and rara horns, instruments used in Vodou religious ceremonies. When Morse gathered together dancers and musicians to create RAM in 1990, the rasin style was popular in Port-au-Prince and gaining popularity in the rest of the country. "Ke'm Pa Sote" by Boukman Eksperyans
Boukman Eksperyans
Boukman Eksperyans is a mizik rasin band from the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The band derives its name from Dutty Boukman, a vodou priest who led a religious ceremony in 1791 that is widely considered the start of the Haitian Revolution...
, whose song title translates to "I Am Not Afraid" in English, was the most popular song at the 1990 Carnival in Port-au-Prince. It was widely understood to be a criticism of the corrupt military government of General Prosper Avril
Prosper Avril
Prosper Avril is a Haitian political figure who was President of Haiti from 1988 to 1990. A trusted member of François Duvalier's Presidential Guard and adviser to Jean-Claude Duvalier, Lt. Gen. Avril led the September 1988 Haitian coup d'état against a transition military government installed...
. RAM adopted a similar format and together with Boukman Eksperyans and other rasin bands developed the style and genre of protest music grounded in Vodou musical tradition. Eventually, Richard Morse became so involved in the Vodou religion through his music that he was initiated as a houngan
Houngan
Houngan is the term for a male priest in the voodoo religion in Haiti . The term is derived from the Fon word "hùn gan". There are two ranks of houngan, houngan asogwe and houngan sur pwen...
, or Vodou priest, in 2002. Describing a RAM concert, Morse explains, "Yes, you might see our dancers go into a trance. Some get possessed by the loas, to the rhythm of the drums, but it's a natural state when it happens. You can't fake it."
The musical style of RAM combines Vodou rhythms with rock and roll, but also includes influences from the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, funk music
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, and occasional riffs from The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
. Elements of other Haitian and Caribbean musical traditions, such as kompa
Kompa
Compas is a musical genre derivative of the Haitian Méringue, the national music of Haiti that people have been dancing and playing since the 1800s. written as Compas Direct in French, and Kompa or konpa in Haitian Creole. Worldwide, several festivals annually feature Compas music and other aspects...
, find their way into the music as well. The lyrics are a mixture of English, Kréyòl, and French, and many of the songs are narratives of the personal experiences of the band, or social commentary on current events in Haiti. "Boat People Blues" on the album Puritan Vodou, for example, offers a lament for the refugees who fled Haiti following the 1991 coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
. On the same album, "Ayizan", describes the final conversation between Morse and his friend, the artist Stevenson Magloire
Stevenson Magloire
Stevenson Magloire was a famous artist and painter born on August 16, 1963 in Pétionville, Haiti. He was an important contributor to the School of Saint Soleil art movement...
, the day before Magloire was stoned to death in the street by paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
attachés. The band's popularity in Haiti stems in part from this challenge to authority, known as "voye pwen" or "sending a point." As one Port-au-Prince resident has said of Morse and the band, "I love his music. He tells what's real, what's going on, like Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
."
Albums
- Aïbobo (19921992 in musicThis is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1992.-January–February:*January 11**Nirvana's Nevermind album goes to #1 in the US Billboard 200 chart, establishing the widespread popularity of the Grunge movement of the 1990s....
) - Puritan Vodou (19971997 in musicThis is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1997.-January:*January 9 – David Bowie performs his 50th Birthday Bash concert at Madison Square Garden, New York City, USA with guests Frank Black, The Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, Robert Smith of The Cure, Lou Reed, and Billy...
) - Kite Yo Pale (20022002 in musicThis is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 2002.-Events:*February 3 – U2 perform during the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXVI...
) - MadiGra (20032003 in music-January:* January – following an investigation by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and London detectives, police raids in England and the Netherlands recover nearly 500 original Beatles studio tapes, recorded during the Let It Be sessions. Five people are arrested...
) - Le Jardin (20032003 in music-January:* January – following an investigation by The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and London detectives, police raids in England and the Netherlands recover nearly 500 original Beatles studio tapes, recorded during the Let It Be sessions. Five people are arrested...
)
Film
The single “Ibo Lele (Dreams Come True)", from RAM's second album, Aïbobo, was included on the soundtrack of the 1993 movie PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia (film)
Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film that was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme. The film stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington...
, starring Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
and Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He first rose to prominence when he joined the cast of the medical drama, St. Elsewhere, playing Dr...
.
External links
- Photos of a 2005 RAM performance in New York City.
- Audio stream of recording of RAM during the 2003 Carnival.