Boukman Eksperyans

Voodoo Voices Boukman Eksperyans' Good Ginen by Elena Oumano

World music has a lengthy roll call of singing saviors--some sincere, most hot-stepping profilers. Few, however, have invested as profoundly in the dream of a world made better through music as critically-acclaimed Haitian "racine" (roots) band Boukman Eksperyans, founded and led by lead singers/songwriters Theodore "Lolo" Beaubrun and his wife, Mimerose "Manze" Beaubrun. Since its 1978 founding, the Grammy-nominated, nine-member group has fought for a revolution of the heart, often at the risk of their lives, churning out three U.S. releases that are as stunning musically as they are socially visionary and spiritually dense. Revolution, their fourth and latest set, delivers their finest execution yet of overlapping soul revelations [with liner note translations] located in anyone's idea of bad-ass boogie nirvana. Boukman Eksperyans took its name and mission from the Jamaican slave, Jacob Boukman, who created voodoo out of several West African religions in order to spiritually unify Haiti's slaves, preparing them to wage the West's first black revolution. "Since we started the group, we've been inviting religious leaders to our home: Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Buddhist monks," says Beaubrun, also a popular actor and host of a radio talk/music show on political and spiritual concerns. "We just talk, and we always see that what's important is the inner nature. In Haiti we call it "ginen," a person's state of being or essence. Ginen is the total of what you think, say, feel, and do. It's also the way of the three roots: love, truth, and justice. That's the aim of voodoo, and those virtues--love, truth, justice--are the foundation of Boukman Eksperyans. The spirit led us to that." Voodoo also means "lakou," a socio-economic unit inherited from African communalism. "The threat is that lakou can't be controlled," Beaubrun explains. "The bourgeois wants those lands but they can't get them. Haitian peasants are poor, but they have land and power because they live in lakou, community. And lakou helps people become ginen. The lakou protects the people, and it solves the mystery of what allows Haitian people to laugh even though the body suffers. They don't want to lose the joy that's still strong. It's the source of the revolution. "The voodoo way of life is inextricably linked with the music Haiti's slaves brought with them from Africa, and Boukman was the first group to defy Pere and Bebe Doc Duvalier's regime by defining themselves as a racines music group. Racines celebrates Haiti's African identity, an act of treason to the government and an offense to the island's upper class Francophiles. The music drives spiraling African call and response chanting and singing over intricately interlocking voodoo drum rhythms and rara, Haiti's oldest indigenous music, which is played mainly during springtime purification rites in the small mountain villages of the North. Boukman weaves into these indigenous sounds such pop forms as rock, reggae, and funk. 1991's Vodou Adjae, the group's first lp release, won a Grammy nomination and was the number one world music album for radio, based on listener response and play lists. It was followed by 1992's equally passionate Kalfou Danjere. Throughout their making, the band continued to endure great personal suffering and loss, including jailings, tear gas attacks at their concerts, and worse, the death from meningitis of its 25-year-old bassist/drummer Michel-Melthon "Olicha" Lynch. 1995's Liberte was recorded in Jamaica, at Bob Marley's Tuff Gong studio; soon after the band escaped Haiti during the U.S. embargo, were refused entry into the U.S., and finally made their way to Jamaica, where they stayed for nine months before being allowed to return home. All of these tribulations merely steeled the band's dedication, and Revolution evidences that urgency, as well as heartbreaking pathos. With Western powers and police in charge of Haiti today--a democratic regime Beaubrun describes as "sick"--the island's suffering and poverty is at an all-time low. Revolution speaks more adamantly than ever of the need for a homegrown revolution of hearts, minds, and spirits. Fittingly, the album dips deeper than ever into Haiti's well of African rhythms, even coming up with a previously undiscovered Mandingo voodoo rhythm from an insular lakou community in Haiti's mountainous north. Those crosscurrents of throbbing rhythms, trillings of bamboo flutes, Beaubrun's keening Creole wails, and Manze's lilting cadences elucidate the equally compelling Western keyboard and guitar riffs and buoyant funk horn choruses. The tracks are more incantations than songs--dance floor voodoo--as one slides into the next, propelled by surging rhythms and tugged at by familiar pop phrases. Today, Boukman Eksperyans is more beloved than ever and advocate more loudly for a true democratic revolution in Haiti. Friends and associates in the world music community concerned for the band's safety urge them to leave Haiti, but they refuse. Revolution is not just great music; it's the most eloquent testament possible to Boukman's profound human commitment. " Many times people came with arms in front of us," says Beaubrun. "But they didn't pull the trigger because their spirit didn't tell them 'yes' for that."

Elena Oumano writes about music for the Village Voice, Billboard, and Vibe, among other publications. She has a Ph.D. from NYU in language and communication.

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