Rara!: Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (review)

Elizabeth McAlister is certainly qualified to write a book on the Haitian musical tradition known as Rara. She earned a bachelor degree in anthropology from Vassar College and two master's degrees in African American studies and history and a doctorate in American studies from Yale. Furthermore, one of McAlister's specialties is Haitian Vodou, a religion with which she became intimately acquainted during multiple visits to Haiti between 1990 and 1995. As one would expect, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (Rara! henceforth) reflects the strengths of McAlister's interdisciplinary background, as well as her extensive firsthand knowledge of Haitian history, religion, politics, and music. From one point of view, McAlister's unique skill set constitutes a refreshing change of pace, methodologically speaking. Rather than delving into detailed musical analysis, decoding local epistemologies of musical performance, or developing yet another quirky system of transcription, she instead spends her time exploring divination and magic, analyzing dialogic speech codes, and examining Rara as part of the historical struggle of Haiti's poor, oppressed majority to obtain basic human rights on both the local and international stage. Another plus is the CD of field recordings that is included with the book, partially to offset her lack of musical transcriptions. Due to McAlister's interdisciplinary, multifaceted approach, Rara! is of intrinsic value to anyone who is involved or interested in academic discourses about race and resistance, class struggle, and/or the various cultures of the Caribbean and the African diaspora.

In terms of validating McAlister's rather unconventional way of approaching a musical ethnography, I am not trying to say that similar types of studies in the field of ethnomusicology systematically lack proper attention to what some would call "extramusical" events or variables. Rather, I am arguing that McAlister makes a trade. She marvelously reveals the social, religious, political, and historical dimensions that surround, penetrate, and constitute Rara with a degree of precision that some ethnomusicologists could never match. On the other hand, she does so at the expense of the musical aspects of Rara, which many ethnomusicologists could never do without.

That is to say, from an ethnomusicologist's point of view, Rara! neglects to examine the process of musical cognition, the actual mental process of musical inception, creation, and execution, from the Haitian point of view. Three important caveats to my criticism need mentioning: 1) McAlister never explicitly professes an interest in Haitian musical cognition; 2) she reaches several compelling, significant conclusions without having to resort to a discussion of musical cognition; and 3) my definition of "music" is purposefully selective for the time being, and refers strictly to patterns of humanly produced sound as opposed to other musical behaviors such as speech, movement, and ritual—all of which are central to Rara.

Ultimately, I am arguing that McAlister's trade is worthwhile—Rara! is the first serious study to examine Rara as a social, religious, and political phenomenon; McAlister breaks new ground without having to resort to the traditional research methods of ethnomusicology.

Rara is about play, religion, and politics and also about remembering a bloody history and preserving in its face. But at its most bare philosophical level, Rara is a ritual enactment of life itself and an affirmation of life's difficulties.

(23)

Yet she does make several theoretical advances about cross-cultural performance that, without being informed by the perspective of ethnomusicology, give pause for serious consideration.

After an introduction that outlines the course, trajectory, and theoretical underpinnings of her study, McAlister analyzes the performance events of Rara in chapter 1, titled "Work and Play, Pleasure and Performance." Here, she examines the distinctive and unique combinations of musical and visual elements in Rara performance: the hocketed banbou melodies, the striped and sequined costumes, the baton twirling, and the dancing. She also looks...