Rara in Haiti, Gaga in the Dominican Republic
Festivals are held all year long throughout the Caribbean, but the main one is the carnival or the pre-Lenten Mardigras. The most elaborate and colorful carnivals are the ones in Trinidad and Tobago and in Brazil. However, countries like Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica are also known for respectively their Rara, Gaga, and Jonkannu. In Haiti, Rara, which follows Mardigras, is known as gaga in the Dominican Republic, and Jonkannu, now held as a tourist attraction during the winter and spring months, is found not only in Jamaica, but around the English-speaking Caribbean from Belize to the Bahamas.
In Haiti, rara which means "to make merry," and is inherited from the Yoruba people in West Africa, had, until the 1900s, been relegated to the countryside or the provinces. In counterpart, certain towns like Leogane, the capital of the Xaragua kingdom of Queen Anacaona at the time of the Arawaks, is reputed for its rara. With the demographic changes brought about by the migration of a large contingent of people from the countryside to the city of Port-au-Prince, the tendency is now to blend both Mardigras and rara in one long spring festival from January to Easter. Furthermore, with the rise of the Haitian Diaspora, several towns in the provinces have boosted their rara with the sponsorship of townspeople now working in the US or Canada. This is true in the case of Desdunes, a small agricultural town in the Artibonite valley, and Mirebalais in the Central Plateau where my wife and I have built a cultural center and school complex, the Gawou Ginou Foundation.
Carnival in Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago
LIVERPOOL, P.97
Carnival cultural activities were not the monopoly of any one Caribbean island: enslaved Africans from Cuba in the north to Trinidad in the south carried out such activities, and after enslavement ended they influenced one another... Africans on the main land including in the Guianas, Surinam, Belize, and Brazil also held masquerades and Christmas festivities.
However, in modern times, Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago emerged as the two main centers of carnival in the Caribbean. So, let's take a quick look at the two countries.
Central to carnival development in Brazil is the "escola de samba" (school of samba), the institution that nourished the samba. The first one appeared in 1928 in Estacio and Praca Onze, two neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro, under the leadership of Ismael Silva, Nilton Bastos, and others. The main function of the groups that soon followed was to hold a parade at carnival time in their local communities. They were opposed by the elite class which did not take well to the African influenced revelry.
The beginnings were not easy. People had to fight for recognition which came late in the 1950s, when the carnival parade moved from their communities to down town Rio, when a samba route capable of accommodating some 100,000 people was constructed in 1990. The escola de samba did more than parade. They were and have become the center of community life, with elementary schools, nurseries, and medical assistance. Carnival in Brazil, which was resisted by the upper class, has become the world's biggest show-case, generating millions of dollars.
Historically, carnival was the preserve of the upper-class parading societies, with masked balls modeled on Parisian styles, in which the notion of civility, politeness, good manners, and pedigree prevailed. After 1888, the date of emancipation, Blacks began to enter the festival with bands known as "charangas," playing atabaque, agogo, xequeres, and other African instruments. The upper class reacted by banning the Africanized carnival. The Africans responded with the creation of the "afoxe" (Yoruba priest), and asserted themselves by taking to the streets. In the 1920s, early afoxes had names such as "Lembranca Africana" (African memories), "Lutadores de Africa" (African warriors), or "Congo de Africa." In 1949, with the creation of Candomble houses like Gantois, Casa Branca, and Axe Opo Afonja, the afoxe "Filhos de Gandhi" was founded, and today it remains an institution..
Until the 1970s, Brazil had the reputation of a racial democracy, which in fact was the unstated national policy. The government's way of solving the country's racial problem was to declare that it did not exist. With the advent of de-colonization in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, the1960s Civil Rights movement in the US, and the world-wide Black consciousness movement, the afoxe re-emerged in Bahia, under the new name of "blocos-afro." "Ile Aiye" (house of life) founded in 1974, was the first blocos-afro of modern time to follow in the tradition of the 1920s, and to focus on socio-cultural and economic issues. In 1979, Olodum (Olodumare, Yoruba Supreme Deity) emerged as the most powerful among the many blocos-afro founded in the 1970s. In Pelerinho, a neighborhood in Salvador, Bahia, Olodum developed a socio-economic program that included schools, stores, museums, art galleries, and cooperatives in an effort to contribute to the development of their community. The new afoxe spearheaded a movement of cultural validation, with the drums taking center stage, and in which each drum stands as a banner for negritude and the re-affirmation of a rhythmic tradition (Fryer ). Olodum, like all the other blocos-afro, form an important link in the evolution of Pan-Africanism, Indigenism, Negritude, and the Black Consciousness movement of the late 20th century. Musically, they blended the music of Candomble and Macumba with salsa, merengue, and reggae which became the powerful samba-reggae.
Composer: 0
-
"Sister Carol - Reggae Samba"
Rara bands hold ceremonies to ask the spirits to protect them and their instruments on the spiritually dangerous streets.
