Rara music is a Lenten processional music with strong ties to the voodoo religious tradition. It has been commonly confused with Haitian Carnival since both celebrations involve large groups of dancing revelers in the streets. In resume, Rara is a Haitian festival, music genre, dance form, and sometimes political protest that combine religion and carnival. It’s a unique form of street procession music that takes place during Easter Week and involves musical bands that parade through local areas.
Rara is performed from Ash Wednesday (the day after Carnival ends) until Easter Sunday, or Easter Monday in some parts of Haiti. Rara bands roam the streets of Haiti during Lent, performing religious ceremonies, as part of their ritual obligations to the “lwa” or either spirits of Haitian voodoo. Gede, a spirit associated with death and sexuality, is an important spiritual presence in Rara celebrations. It often possesses an ougan (male Voodoo priest) or a mambo, (female Voodoo priest) before the band begins its procession, in order to bless the participants and wish them safe travels for their nightly sojourns.
A vibrant annual street festival, Rara includes Voodoo follower who march loudly into public spaces. It takes on an active role in politics and other aspects of life. During the six weeks of Lent, Rara bands parade for miles, playing music, dancing, and performing rituals for Afro-Haitian spirits, their ancestors, and local “big men.”
Rara has both historical and contemporary lessons to teach. It is a festival that shares a history with other Afro-Atlantic performance traditions. Moreover Haitians at home, as well as in the Diaspora are currently making interesting uses of Rara. Rara is a certain kind of performance given orally. It is part of a cultural complexity that includes public verbal word-smiting, displays of masculinity, and competitive performances of dance and music, all growing out of a religious core. Although it was made invisible by the postcolonial elites of the nation, Rara and its performance orally sustain possibilities and postures of survival, for the long-suffering, disenfranchised majority classes.
In its orality, performative competition, and masculinity, as well as in its oppositional stance, Rara shares similar characteristics with other Black Atlantic performance traditions like Carnival, Jonkonnu, Copoeira, Calypso, Blues, Jazz, News Orleans’ second-line parades, Native American indian Pow-Wows, Reggae, Dance-hall, hip-hop and numerous other forms. Rara is about play, religion, and politics and also about remembering a bloody history and survival. But at its most bare philosophical level, Rara is a ritual enactment of life itself and an affirmation of life’s difficulties.
The typical orchestra consists of three drums followed by three or more bamboo instruments called bamboo or vaksin, then several waves of percussion players with small, had-held instruments, and finally a chorus of singers in addition. There is usually a core group of performers-either majò jon (baton majors), or Wa and Rèn (Kings and Queens) who dance for contributions.
The musical leader of a Rara band is the samba or simidò (song writer), usually a man, who is a recognized as an artist in his community. The samba may take a local event and create a scandal, a political song in which he gloats about the Rara or his own abilities. The term samba can be used as a gloss for “everyman” in song lyrics.
Song, then, can be especially created by a samba to sing in Rara. They can send a point to an intended hearer. They can be commentaries on neighborhood gossip, social judgments about specific scandals, or they can make wider pronouncements about the tribulations of the community in its struggle against landowners, national politics, or even international relations. At any given moment, a Rara is capable of singing a locally produced song about a community issue or a song borrowed from Afro-Haitian religion, which are, in effect, part of the Haitian-National religious repertoire.
