An Interview with Clotaire Bazile
- An Interview with Clotaire Bazile
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Clotaire Bazile, Brookline, MA, 1993. Photo by Anna Wexler.
Clotaire Bazile is one of the great contemporary Vodou flagmakers and the pivotal artist in the recent metamorphosis of the flag from a primarily ritual form into a commercial art object. He has also been a working oungan or Vodou priest for twenty-five years. He started making flags for his peristil [temple] in Port-au-Prince in the early 1970s after being instructed by the lwa [spirits] in his dreams to do so. Two French tourists came to him for a card reading (divination) in 1973 and asked if they could see the flags which were rolled up in his ounfò [altar chamber]. They promised to send him more customers if he would make flags to sell, and he subsequently organized an informal workshop, with family members and friends in his neighborhood sewing with him when they had time. In 1980 he opened a formal workshop in the Belair section of Port-au-Prince, a popular quarter and stronghold of Vodou.
The following discussion links his development as a healer and ritual specialist with fluid access to the lwa to his artistic and entrepreneurial gifts as a flagmaker.
This interview was conducted in November of 1993 in Brookline, MA, and was translated from Haitian Creole by Lionel Hogu and Anna Wexler.
Like I told you, the lwa [spirits] made me undergo a lot of suffering, and at the time when I finished preparing for my first communion, the mistè [spirits] took possession of me.
In school too?
In school too the lwa used to take possession of me. They exhausted me, made me fall down, and I was obliged to give in. My family made the decision. They said, okay, I had to serve the lwa to stop them from causing me so much suffering. My family decided to buy the things I needed to serve the lwa [and] set them up properly, but I started to feel that I didn’t want to continue, and I destroyed everything. As a consequence, the lwa made me develop a swelling on my neck.
So you decided to begin but after you saw everything arranged . . .
I saw too many responsibilities coming.
The responsibilities made you anxious? [End Page 383]
Too much.
Because you were too young, you wanted it . . . ?
. . . to be later, like I wanted it to come later, not at that moment; and when I started to throw everything out—I broke them—then the lwa made me sick. They gave me trouble, and then I reassembled everything I needed to serve them.
How old were you when you threw everything out?
I was 14, 15 years old when I understood that I was going to suffer too much, that I was going to have problems with my family. They didn’t really want to collaborate with me. They didn’t serve the lwa. I had problems with them because, if they were sick, they said I was killing them. They gave me problems all the time: anything wrong, anything strange that happened in the family, they attributed it to me because I was the one who served the lwa. I was the oungan.
That’s terrible.
In the face of their underlying resistance, I changed my mind and said I didn’t want to serve the lwa anymore.
It was your family’s reaction that hurt you like that?
Everybody’s.
You started to reject all that.
Afterwards, when I realized I would experience even more suffering, I took up my responsibilities again. I was older, 19 or so. I started to mature, and I bought the things I needed to serve the lwa again. I arranged them again, [and] then I started to work. In spite of my family’s prejudice, if they had a problem, when they came to me I called the lwa and worked for them.
How did you learn to treat people, in the beginning, before...
