Taste of Haiti brings hand-crafted items to Harleysville shop; helps provide sustainable jobs in Haiti
"We work a fair price and we bring it up here and we sell it and then we take the money and go buy more." — Taste of Haiti owner Dan Ziegler
What Kobe Bryant’s death has taught me about how Black men mourn
Sunday afternoon I was at the Sundance Film Festival when I looked down at my phone and realized I had about a dozen unread messages from friends and colleagues all with the same message: “KOBE IS DEAD.”
Fortunately, my friend — an avid basketball fan who I often catch watching NBA games on his phone or laptop whenever we have the audacity to invite him out during basketball season — had just stepped out of the theater to make a phone call right before I saw those texts. Which gave me time to figure out how I was going to break the news to him that his hero, Kobe Bean Bryant, was gone.
But when he walked back in two minutes later, the stunned expression on his face let me know someone else had beaten me to the punch. He looked gutted; his eyes wet with unshed tears and his usual smile replaced by a tight grimace of disbelief.
The next few hours of film festival activities were a blur. We went to a swank brunch we’d been excited to attend just that morning, but now the chatter of shiny industry folks milling about us felt meaningless, and the carefully prepared gourmet food plated before us tasted dull and almost too heavy to swallow.
I tried to distract myself by making small talk with the folks seated at our table. But every time I looked at my phone, a new detail would come out: Kobe was on the flight with his daughter Gianna when he died. They were headed to her game to speak to a crowd of excited kids. There were seven other fatalities on that flight. Making it worse, TMZ broke the news before the family was even notified.
It began to feel like a constant barrage of bad news, with each update digging the knife even deeper into our chests. Until finally, while we stood backstage waiting for a film panel to begin, my dear friend, who I always tease about not showing enough emotion, threw down his phone, and let himself cry.
As I leaned over to rub his back and console him, in my periphery I noticed three other Black men in our vicinity staring off into the distance and holding back tears of their own. That’s when it hit me that even though we were all mourning the loss of Kobe Bryant, for brothers in particular, this one hit differently.
When death is swift and cruel
As someone who has had to deal with the mourning process a lot over the last two years, it has been my lived experience that there is death… and then there is sudden death.
Both are painful, but the latter has an extra bite to it that leaves you feeling as if you’ve been betrayed by time, and also wishing you could go back and savor moments you previously took for granted.
That’s why the swift and cruel timing of Kobe Bryant’s passing, just hours after Lebron James passed him on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, felt like a sick joke. Most of us — myself included — expected Kobe to grow old in the public consciousness. For people in my age group specifically, he was the first NBA player we watched play out his entire career from start to finish and then segue into an exciting new chapter after retirement.
He was a North Star of sorts. We grew up with him and therefore, whether we realized it or not, his mortality was tied to our own, with his death feeling just as abstract and distant as we would all hope ours to be.
The Black Mamba was equal parts man and myth. As accessible as he was to several generations of sports fans, to Black men in particular, he was a flesh and blood reminder of what they could achieve and evolve into, even after making potentially life-damaging mistakes.
Let’s be real, this world and particularly this country isn’t known for giving Black men second chances, or even first ones. Since enslavement, our men have been seen as property; sexually deviant brutes with no humanity or tenderness to speak of. They’ve been portrayed as unfeeling caricatures and dismissed as emotionally unintelligent aggressors who only seek to pound their chests and assert their dominance while instilling fear in the hearts of their women and white counterparts.
And the saddest part is many of them have bought into this image of themselves. Black men are supposed to be things not people, with the only exception being made for the Ivy League, super articulate, Obama archetypes who are so perfect in their presentation that even the mainstream has to begrudgingly acknowledge their “Black Excellence.”
But then there was Kobe; flawed, focused, unrelenting Kobe.
A misstep and subsequent assault charge early in his career made the sheen of perfection an impossible distinction for him. To many, that should have been the end of his story, leaving him dismissed as yet another bad boy Black male athlete with an asterisk next to his name.
But true to that “Mamba mentality” he refused to let the biggest mistake of his life define him, and instead spent 20 years grabbing life by the neck and shaking every bit of goodness out of it he could.
Right before our eyes, we watched a tall lanky kid become a good man, in the most breathtaking sense of the word. A devoted husband, a proud “girl dad” and a tenacious and formidable athlete whose prowess on the court was only outshined by his generosity towards his teammates and fans.
For Black men, Kobe Bryant was their redemption song, their constant reminder that they could be more than whatever box society chose to put them in. He was the brother, childhood friend, and superhero they all needed to tap into when everything else on the planet conspired to tell them they weren’t good enough.
Because of this, they let themselves love him deeply, and attach themselves to him as if he was family. But that’s the tricky thing about love. Whenever you give anything (or anyone) the power to make you that happy, you’re also giving them the ability to break your heart into a million little pieces.
It’s ok to cry
Black people are probably some of the proudest and most unflinching humans on the planet, and our men in particular excel at this. As a result many of us women, can go years or perhaps even a whole lifetime never seeing the brothers around us shed a tear. The side effect of this is we often end up forgetting how vulnerable — and human — they are.
But since Sunday I’ve seen men who I honestly didn’t even think had tear ducts, sobbing like little children, both in real life and on my television screens. And it’s been a bittersweet reminder about just how much “stuff” they hold in every day and teach themselves to push aside.
The last few days have revealed that Black men don’t feel any less than the rest of us, or hurt any less than we do either, they just have much less freedom to show it. So when I knew I was going to be writing this piece today, I asked many of them, flat out, “Why does THIS loss hurt so much?”
In summation they said they felt “blindsided” and “deeply wounded” to lose someone they identified with so intimately. One went so far as to explain that he felt society needed to “let us have this wake for Kobe. Let us play our pick-up games in his honor. Let us hug our children, kiss our wives and dap our friends. Let us cry together and surprise everyone who doesn’t think that we’re people.”
So out of respect, that’s exactly what I plan to do.
I’m going to let the Black men around me mourn, hold space for them to put down their armor and remind them it’s ok to weep for as long and as hard as they need to. Because the unexpected, but incredibly soul-stirring silver lining of this tragedy is that the men in my life are finally allowing themselves to feel and show vulnerability in ways I’m not sure even they knew they were capable of.
I’d like to think that Kobe — the older and wiser family man who planned to dedicate the rest of his life to uplifting his community, would be proud to know that this too gets to be part of his amazing and complicated legacy.
Somerville artist invites community to celebrate Haitian culture
Somerville’s notable artist Judelande Antoine has dedicated her life to Haitian dance and cultural celebration.
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Judelande Antoine loves to dance, but her real passion is sharing her dancing and cultural celebration with others.
On Jan. 25, Somerville Haitians United, which Antoine founded, will host their sixth annual Haitian Cultural celebration at Unity Church in Davis Square, featuring Haitian dance, poetry, clothing, art, sculpture, and food.
Originally from Haiti, Antoine now lives in Somerville’s Union Square. She is a dancer specializing in Haitian folklore, and dances several of Haiti’s 21 distinct rhythms.
“I cannot really explain why I love dancing — it is a feeling,” she said. “Dance makes me sad, happy and excited. It doesn’t matter how I feel. There is always something that makes me enjoy dancing.”
In Haiti, Antoine began dancing in church at 7 years old, teaching in high school, and at 15, was taken aside to receive more training. Now she volunteers teaching dance to children in Somerville and Cambridge, but when she was younger she was not allowed to dance outside of church.
“In our village, there was a cultural group that performed every Friday evening,” she said. “I thought it was so fun to watch and dance, but my parents would have us go inside. Even though they did not let me, I would open the door and watch them in the roads and dance anyway inside the doorway. I would feel good watching them.”
Antoine has also received a New England Foundation for the Arts grant to study more dance forms, and in 2019 she was a Somerville Artist of the Month award recipient.
“I feel like dancing allows me to tell my story and have my story be heard,” she said. “Receiving this award makes me feel like my story has been heard.”
Celebrating Haitian culture through community work
A few years after Antoine moved to the U.S., she began volunteering for Haitian adult daycare programs such as Cay Pam, Village LA Joie, and Sante belle Vie, in Mattapan, West Roxbury, and Dorchester. In 2018, she received a citation from Gov. Charlie Baker for her “contributions in the advancement and promotion of the Haitian culture.”
“Doing community work is one of my strengths; I help anywhere and everywhere I am,” she said. “Doing community work is not something that I started in America — I began in Haiti. On May 18, 2018, I organized a Haitian Flag Day Celebration [and] I was so surprised and happy to receive the governor’s citation after the celebration.”
On Jan. 1, 1804, Haiti became the first black nation to declare independence, so Antoine founded this cultural event in January 2015 to celebrate that freedom and cultivate community love and support.
“I love many things about this event,” she said. “First, we see many people we have not seen for so long [and] the community gets together. Second, we revive the Haitian culture together. Third, we have chance to promote our culture and share it.”
Her work centers on youth, and Haitians United has multiple groups to foster community among children and teens.
“It is important to me to work in the Haitian community to help younger generation to embrace their culture,” she said. “Our mission is to revive and promote Haitian culture while coaching youth to build their leadership through arts. Youth are the future of a society and the development of a country. The youth will replace us.”
The Haitian Cultural Celebration, supported by a Somerville Arts Council grant, is from 5-9 p.m. at Unity Church on Jan. 25. The program of dance and poetry reading begins at 6:30 p.m.
Students honor Haiti earthquake victims
Planet Kreyol and the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs host a remembrance ceremony to salute victims of the 2010 earthquake with songs, poetry, dance, and more.
Ten years ago, a massive earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, forever changing the lives of many, including Jordi Polycarpe, a junior at the University of Miami. Her cousin was one of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the catastrophic disaster.
“My cousin was just five-years-old,” said Polycarpe, a musicianship, artistry development, and entrepreneurship major. “This time of the year is difficult for my family and I, and it’s just really important to come together and remember the good things.”
On Wednesday, the Haitian student group on campus, Planet Kreyol, hosted 10 Years of Growth, a ceremony commemorating the earthquake and celebrating Haiti’s growth. Students, faculty, staff, and members of the community gathered in the Shalala Student Center ballroom for a program that featured poetic performances, dance selections, and remarks by Patricia A. Whitely, vice president for student affairs, and Louis Herns Marcelin, associate professor in the departments of international studies, anthropology, and public health sciences.
“It kind of feels like an out-of-body experience to be in charge of planning something like this, alongside Sara,” said nursing and psychology major Herveline Saintil, referring to her Planet Kreyol co-president Sara Stjuste. “This is a big deal and it’s an honor to be able to host such an event. It’s something that we do in commemoration and out of respect for those who have fallen.”
Two days before the earthquake destroyed Haiti, Marcelin and three University of Miami students, who called themselves Soley Ini—creole for united suns—were in Haiti for meetings as they prepared to open a youth-to-youth project in Cité Soleil that would provide education programs, cultural activities, and mentoring.
Now a decade later, Haitians are still in turmoil as the country is currently crippled by fuel shortages, scarcity of food, and rising inflation. Marcelin said the island is searching for ways to balance two dynamics that are working against each other.
“Ten years later, the fragility has been compounded, the poverty has been compounded by governance and political issues, an international community has created dependency, and several other disasters have happened in between,” said Marcelin, founder of the Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development. “While at the same time, young people are trying to do what they can and create an environment for their future. Through community-based organizations and social media, they are trying to create hope for the future.”
Despite the country’s history Marcelin still has hope that things will get better. As he wrapped up his keynote speech, he encouraged the youth in the audience to continue supporting research and leadership and to civically engage to help rebuild Haiti.
“You are in a position of power,” he declared. “There are a lot of things that you can do. Think about the leadership you want to see. Your vitality and your knowledge are critical for the future.”
Black Travel Vibes: Soak Up The Sun And Culture Of Haiti
Contrary to popular belief, there’s more to the island of Haiti than its well-documented struggles. Tranquil beaches, roaring waterfalls, and breathtaking landscapes are just some of the beauty features that many overlook when it comes to the Caribbean gem.
Add to that a rich history and culture that dates all the way back to January 1, 1804 when Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the island of Saint-Domingue free and independent from French rule following a successful revolution and created the world’s first free Black republic, and Haiti becomes a destination that should be at the top of everyone’s travel wish list.
For Jamaican Brooklyn girl and London ex-pat Rondette Amoy (@whatdettedoes) visiting Haiti with a close friend opened her eyes to a place she didn’t truly know and couldn’t wait to soak up. Check out a few of Rondette’s photos and take notes from our exclusive guide to discover why Haiti is more than just your average tropical getaway.
01Welcome to HaitiLocated in the Caribbean, the island nation of Haiti is full of natural beauty that will rival any of the other nearby islands. Haiti remains a relatively budget-friendly island getaway (though daily transportation can add up) with 1 Haitian Gourde equaling less than one U.S. dollar. Visit from November through March for the best weather.
PHOTO CREDIT: @WHATDETTEDOES02Local VibesTypically big brand hotels can come across as cookie-cutter, however, at the Marriott Port-au-Prince, local businesses like Ayiti Natives bath products fill the rooms and Haitian artists such as Peter Satyr Jacmel line the walls to create a unique vibe.
PHOTO CREDIT: MARRIOTT PORT AU PRINCE03Unique FlavorsIf you thought that the food throughout the Caribbean is all the same - you thought wrong! One of the things that makes Haiti unique is its flavorful cuisine. Don't leave without treating your tastebuds to local eats like griot and kabice.
04Independence DayA proud symbol of the world's first Black republic, Citadelle Laferrière is a large mountaintop fortress that played a significant role in Haiti's fight for freedom. It is a must-see on any visit to the island.
Rooted in history: The Haitian influence on New Orleans cuisine
Ricardo Jean-Baptiste was born in Haiti. In the United States, he became a chef. He moved to New Orleans in 2015 for a job at a large hotel that caters to tourists and conventioneers.
“When I came here the first day, I’m almost crying because everything looks similar,” Jean-Baptiste said. “It was like memories, memories running through my head.”
The shotgun houses, those narrow blocks that form many New Orleans neighborhoods, were just like houses in Haiti, down to the exact dimensions. The bright colors on buildings edged with Victorian frills were reminiscent of the vivid hues that decorate Caribbean homes. The second line parades through New Orleans streets were like the rara. And the food of New Orleans took Jean-Baptiste back to his childhood in Haiti.
“The gumbo, so flavorful. Reminds me of home,” he said. “We do something similar to gumbo, except we don’t use roux.”
Before he first ate in the city, Jean-Baptiste was already familiar with the taste of New Orleans’ Monday staple of red beans and rice, the starchy but bland mirlitons, also called chayotes, and the many ways Louisianans cook okra (except for pickled okra, that was new for him). Each dish had an analog in his native Haiti.
The city of New Orleans, citing the latest census data, puts the local Haitian population at 1,500. Members of that community, however, think it might be as large as 6,000 or 7,000, having grown since the massive earthquake in 2010 that devastated Haiti.
Since New Orleans was founded three centuries ago many people have added layers to its culture. But the wave of immigrants at the turn of the 19th century, fleeing the revolution that created Haiti, transformed New Orleans from a minor outpost to a major city. That influence has not always been recognized.
Those refugees doubled New Orleans’ population. They found a place where French was spoken, and as Americans poured in after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, they bolstered the city’s French identity. They came to a land that, like the colony they left, had free people of color. In the United States, they also found a place, like Haiti before its revolution, where enslaved blacks still worked the land.
They brought their experience and skills farming lucrative sugarcane to Louisiana and “helped reduce the risk of failure in a nascent industry that required large capital outlays and production on a massive scale,” according to Alfred N. Hunt’s “Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean.” Here, white people and free black people from the colony the French called Saint-Dominique succeeded as bakers, shop owners, musicians, cabinet makers and engineers. They added sidewalks and installed streetlights in New Orleans. They founded newspapers, opened schools and created theaters.
The flavors they introduced to New Orleans are harder to trace than their businesses that left behind buildings and logs of taxes paid and profits made. And cooking, in the time before global transportation, was forced to adapt to different ingredients when the cooks moved to new lands. Two centuries later, though, the familiar flavors that Jean-Baptiste and other recent Haitian immigrants taste in New Orleans prove the depth of that influence.
Chef Donald Link, who grew up in Cajun Country and runs the celebrated New Orleans restaurants Herbsaint, Cochon, Gianna and Pêche Seafood Grill, noticed the same culinary kinship. The more he traveled across the Caribbean, the more he found “mirror dishes” for what he knew from Louisiana and the South.
"In looking at the history of this food and the Caribbean, this food really exists solely in the Caribbean for 200, 300 years before it ever shows its face in the United States of America," Link said.
Stewed beans. Collard greens. Thick stews like gumbo. Rice dishes that looked like the ancestor of Louisiana's jambalaya.
"That's the one thing I can say throughout the Caribbean with compared to here," he said, "is the salt level and the heat level are almost identical between Creole, Cajun, soul food and Southern food."
The arrival of the refugees from Saint-Domingue kept those flavors strong at the moment when Americans brought blander palates to Louisiana.
"When we talk about the influence of the islands in general, especially Haiti, we cannot help but think that they've formed the cooking styles of the Africans that eventually made their way into the kitchens of New Orleans," said John Folse, chef and culinary historian.
Folse said the "black pot cooking" of Louisiana, where gumbos, gravies and vegetables simmer slowly in cast iron, has its roots in the Caribbean and before that in West Africa.
"Everything we start with, we nearly burn it before we get to the next thing," said Charly Pierre, who runs the Haitian stall Fritai inside New Orleans' St. Roch Market. "We really pull out the flavors."
Pierre, who was born in Massachusetts to parents from Haiti, clearly sees the influence of the island nation in New Orleans, even if that connection at times gets concealed.
"The food and all, it's still here. It's just that people don't know about it," he said. "The history, New Orleans has never allowed us to speak for it. I always think about how come there's no Haitian plaque? Well, because it's a Confederate statue in the place of that."
This summer, Jean-Baptiste partnered with other New Orleanians from Haiti to opened Rendez-Vous Creole on the West Bank, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. It's the neighborhood where most Haitians now live.
Decorated in a bold patchwork of colorful murals, Rendez-Vous Creole restaurant houses a pool table, DJ booth and a small stage. It's somewhat the unofficial clubhouse for the Haitian-American community. It is also a place to teach New Orleans about a cuisine that may be foreign but not unfamiliar.
Jean-Baptiste wants the city to know about epis, the blend of garlic, peppers and herbs at the foundation of so many Haitian dishes. He wants them to taste conch simmered in Creole sauce, the sharply spicy slaw pikliz, the starchy, smashed plantains called bannan fri and gratine, a mac and cheese he makes with ground beef.
Jean-Baptiste hopes the city will come to crave griot, the chunks of pork washed with lime, braised until tender and then fried crisp. It's the national dish of Haiti, he said. He will serve it at Rendez-Vous Creole on a plate with rice and fried plantains or, in a nod to his new home, on a loaf of soft French bread as a po-boy, the local sandwich of New Orleans. He is building new bridges between the two cuisines.
Rendez-Vous Creole: 3402 Gen. Collins Ave., New Orleans, 954.934.4055
Fritai at St. Roch Market: 2381 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans
‘Voodoo Is Part of Us’
Inside a religious Haitian soiree in Brooklyn .
In a dark club in Downtown Brooklyn, surrounded by more than 100 people, Agathina Ginoue Nozy took a sip of Haitian rum. She stood near an altar stacked with skulls, lit candles, cigars, rum, coffee and bowls filled with charred salt fish, boiled plantains, cassava and piman (spicy peppers).
“You typically drink white liquor during Fet Gede, but if there is none you drink rum with no ice to feel the heat,” Ms. Nozy said. “Gede is a hot thing.”
Her face was painted to look hollow, like a skull, and she wore a dark skeleton bodysuit and a black veil. With her fingers wrapped around a smoking pipe and an austere look on her face, Ms. Nozy had become the embodiment of Maman Brigitte, a Haitian lwa (or goddess) of death.
Voodoo believers, Haitians and curious partygoers gathered last Saturday night to celebrate Fet Gede, or the Festival of the Dead.
Similar to Mexico’s Day of the Dead, Gede invites revelers to dress up, eat, drink and dance to honor the lwas and the ancestors who came before them. It is one of the most anticipated celebrations in the Haitian voodoo religious calendar.
Ms. Nozy, a 29-year-old Haitian immigrant who was born and raised in Port-au-Prince, moved to New York City just before she turned 17. As someone who believes in voodoo, she looks forward to the celebration each year, but acknowledges that many people, including Haitians, lack an understanding of what it is.
They believe that the religion “has something to do with black magic,” Ms. Nozy said. “Voodoo is part of us. It’s who we are. It’s the culture. Voodoo is the food that we eat. It’s the language that we speak.”
What voodoo is not, contrary to popular belief, is a dark spell-casting practice full of pin-dolls and demonic prayers, said the party’s organizers, Monvelyno Alexis, 43, and Riva Précil, 30, a husband and wife musical duo who have organized one of the city’s most popular Fet Gede events for the past seven years.
This means that the event of Fet Gede can be somewhat misunderstood, too.
“I know a lot of Haitians that dress up their kids for Halloween. But when it comes to Gede they say I am not interested in that thing,” Ms. Nozy said.
“Our generation is more open-minded when it comes to the voodoo religion,” said Ms. Nozy, who was part of a large crew at the party that night.
At the club, guests were dressed in the official Gede colors — black, purple, and white — and danced to rhythmic drumming. The room was thick with smoke from incense and cigars.
The night kicked off with a rum tasting at the altar, which helped guests get in the Gede mood. As Ms. Nozy and her crew danced, one man splattered Florida Water — a perfume used in voodoo for spiritual cleansing and protection — over their heads, leaving a sweet citrus and floral scent that covered the room. At times, Ms. Nozy and others would scream, throw their hands in the air or slam a wooden cane into the ground.
Fet Gede is observed typically in early November, although it can be celebrated all month.
Rituals include a special Gede dance, Banda, and making offerings to the spirits, the most famous of whom is Baron Samedi, known as the god of death (he is also the husband of Maman Brigitte, the goddess of death), Ms. Précil said. Together, both spirits — the Baron and Maman — revel in eroticisms, obscenities and drinking.
The ancestors, Ms. Précil said, like to party. “They don’t have the same restrictions or rules as we do here on earth,” she said. “They’re very fearless, so it’s a time where we sort of channel their ways and celebrate them by taking on their way of life.”
Haitian voodoo is a religion that emerged out of institutional slavery.
Starting in the mid-1600s, many Africans who had been brought against their will to the Island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) arrived with their own spiritual traditions, eventually integrating them with those of the indigenous people of the island. As a result, voodoo, which means “spirit,” was born.
Voodoo, often spelled Vodou, is still regarded by many Haitians as the spiritual source of the country’s strength, healing and resilience.
Mr. Alexis said that voodoo isn’t something he practices or follows with a strict set of rules; it is more of a connection. He emphasized the importance of working to help Haitians reconnect with voodoo through events like this one.
“Whenever somebody asks us questions we always answer them,” he said. “We want to bring the Haitian way back to Haitians.”
Despite more than 80,000 Haitian immigrants in New York City, Gede celebrations aren’t that common, Ms. Précil said. If her ever-expanding parties are proof, however, she sees a growing interest in the event. The couple has been asked recently to bring their party to parts of Canada and even Haiti.
Music and dance are key for a successful Gede. Last weekend, Mr. Alexis and Ms. Précil each sang, accompanied by a live band, and Ms. Nozy performed a Haitian folklore dance, gyrating and chanting to the drummer’s beat. The energy of the crowd swelled as the room became more congested, everyone trying to inch closer to the show.
Folks could be seen taking shots of liquor and eating different Haitian dishes, including griot (fried pork) or banan peze with pikliz (plantains with spicy pickled cabbage).
There was a tarot card reader and a face painter. At one point there was even a trivia contest, testing partygoers on their knowledge of Gede trivia and traditions.
“This is something that our ancestors left for us and we need to cherish it,” Ms. Nozy said. “Even though you’re not in Haiti, if you’re living in a foreign country, the culture is still alive. And it’s in you.”
Haitian Band Performs, Teaches Dance and African Drumming Students
Haiti’s “Roots” band RAM came to campus for a one-day artists’ residency and led drumming and dance workshops for Wesleyan students. They met with students in two classes on Oct. 8.
The group, led by Richard Morse, has produced music for more than 25 years. They recently released their seventh album, August 1791.
In the morning, RAM led a dance workshop for two combined classes: Afro-Brazilian Dance taught by Joya Powell, visiting assistant professor of dance, and Contemporary Dance Technique II/III taught by Katja Kolcio, chair and associate professor of dance. And in the afternoon, they led a workshop for the West African Music and Culture class, taught by John Wesley Dankwa, assistant professor of music.
RAM led students in the traditional Afro-Haitian dance and rhythms, and spoke to students about how these art forms had their source in West Africa, were brought with enslaved Africans to Haiti, were part of the 1791 slave uprising, and have been passed on through the generations since Haiti won its freedom and abolished slavery in 1804.
Photos of the workshop with the West African Music and Culture class are below: (Photos by Nick Sng ’23)
Artists struggle to save Haiti museum after 2010 earthquake
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Franck Louissaint sighed and frowned as he stepped onto his patio and flung aside shower curtains protecting a painting by a former voodoo priest who became a renowned Haitian artist.
The painting from the 1960s once depicted a seemingly joyous voodoo spirit known as a loa, but it warped into something that looked like a three-dimensional satellite image of mountains after it was damaged by rubble and waterlogged when a 2010 earthquake hit the museum where it was displayed.
“It’s like the skin of a crocodile!” exclaimed Mr. Louissaint, an artist who expects seven more months of work to fully restore the painting by Robert Saint-Brice.
It is one of dozens of well-known paintings that artists are still trying to rescue nearly a decade after the magnitude 7.0 quake killed an estimated 300,000 people or more and struck countless buildings, including the Museum of Haitian Art of St. Pierre College—one of the country’s top institutions. More than 600 other watercolors and paintings by prominent artists are still in storage and in danger of decaying as a small group of artists struggles to restore the damaged works.
While life has begun anew for much of Haiti since the quake, the museum has been shuttered for nine years and only recently opened a tiny room to display a small quantity of art.
On a recent day, 91-year-old museum president Louis DuBois walked briskly through the building, pointing out the damaged roof and walls as he occasionally put on his glasses to inspect certain paintings.
“We have to reopen to the public,” he said. “All the great artists are here.”
The quake also devastated other public spaces dedicated to art across Haiti, with $30 million in losses reported at the Museum d’Art Nader, which had one of the world’s most extensive collections of Haitian art.
But the Museum of Haitian Art is one of the few worldwide to host Haitian paintings from the 20th century. The museum, which previously drew 9,000 visitors a year, was established in the 1970s by art lovers to commemorate U.S. painter DeWitt Peters and is tucked into the southeast corner of Port-au-Prince’s historic area. It features mostly donated artwork.
Fewer than a dozen paintings are currently on display, including one titled “Marriage of Interest” by Rigaud Benoit, who is considered a master of Haitian painting, and “Tower of Babel” by Prefete Duffaut, whose work was collected by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Both men also painted murals inside a cathedral in Port-au-Prince that was flattened by the earthquake.
The museum’s oldest painting dates to 1945 and is by seminal Haitian artist Hector Hyppolite.
The Smithsonian Institution has helped the museum restore some paintings, as has the Louvre, which also donated 1,000 copies of a catalog illustrating all of Mr. Hyppolite’s paintings so local officials could sell them to help generate money.
But the museum still has blank, white walls, with hundreds of works stacked in a narrow storage area exposed to heat, humidity and other dangers. They are taken out only for the occasional cleaning while the more than 30 earth-quake-damaged works are being restored.
Among those needing attention is a 1960s lush jungle scene by Jean-Claude Toussaint, which is nearly ripped in half and also slashed diagonally. The painting remains rolled up with yellowed masking tape that has lost its stickiness.
Mr. DuBois estimates that the museum needs $50,000 to reopen, noting the roof must be fixed and the electricity repaired before additional paintings can be displayed.
For now, he and others are relying solely on the restoration efforts of artists such as Erntz Jeudy of nearby Quisqueya University.
Mr. Jeudy recently sat in front of a 71-by-79-inch painting by Miami-based artist Edouard Duval Carrie titled “The Republican Army of Santo Domingo,” which was stripped down to blank canvas in certain areas.
“This means a lot to me because it’s the restoration of a very rich heritage,” he said. “It’s great to be able to work and transmit this to future generations.”
It’s a feeling familiar for Mr. Louissaint, who works up to 10 hours at a time to restore Mr. Brice’s painting. He said it makes him proud to have permission to touch such artwork.
“It’s the story of the old Haiti,” he said. “It starts to live again.” (AP)
Cremas Is Haiti's Beloved Holiday Beverage That You Should Drink All Season
"We associate cremas with the best parts of growing up: communions, weddings, and the holidays. It’s a celebration drink.”
When I asked Nadege Fleurimond, chef and author of Haiti Uncovered, to describe cremas, she paused. Breaking into a wide smile, she said, “It’s like eggnog, but a million times better and without eggs. Think coquito, but creamier, flavorful, bold, and robust.”
Cremas, also spelled kremas, is the celebration drink of Haiti. Its foundation is a mix of condensed and evaporated milk, which is enhanced with cream of coconut, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, and lime. Other variations include almond extract or raisins. Traditionally, the spirit that makes cremas so festive—i.e., boozy—is clairin, a clear liquor that Fleurimond says is akin to moonshine. It's derived from the juice of Haiti’s organic, native sugarcane varieties, which is then fermented by wild yeast. Made in rural areas untouched by industrial farming practices, clairin’s flavor is complex and varies by region, time of year, and producer.
“This is what the everyday Haitian drinks as their liquor, and this is what we use to make our cremas traditionally,” Fleurimond says. However, clairin is not readily available in the States, so other spirits are used. “In the States, people make it with rum since clairin is not common here and with Haitians, the choice of rum is almost always Barbancourt.”
The regional differences among varietals of cremas are not insignificant, as Fleurimond discovered traveling throughout the island for her cookbook, Haiti Uncovered.
“In the north of Haiti, coconut is typically not used in cremas. Southern Haitians tend to use coconut in a lot of foods, and cremas is no exception,” Fleurimond says. However, recent decades have seen some fusion of regional styles. “With the internet and more communication between towns, there is more of a culinary exchange, and you’ll see some people selling cremas made with coconut milk in the north.”
This culinary exchange is not just isolated within the island nation, but across the Atlantic to many Haitians of the diaspora. Charlene Absalon, owner of Queens-based Cremas Absalon, is part of a collective of Haitian-American entrepreneurs looking to educate others on the richness of Haiti’s food and culture. What started as a way for Absalon to learn more about Haitian cuisine turned into a business, and she created Cremas Absalon in 2013. Her cremas uses dark rum and omits the coconut for a more fluid consistency.
Absalon is not afraid to challenge tradition with flavors such as coffee, cinnamon, creme brûlée, and hazelnut, an ingredient not found in Haitian cuisine. “I’m taking these American recipes I collected as a child and incorporating them into Haitian flavors,” she says.
Despite initial pushback from some members of her community for not being “authentic” enough, Absalon is on a mission to redefine cremas. “I wanted to evolve what cremas should be. I call my cremas ‘new age’ because I wanted to create different flavors that pair well with the creaminess, and something that is versatile,” she says. Her version of cremas has found local and national success, so she plans to expand her home-based business to a retail location next year.
While opinions abound on how to make great cremas, both Fleurimond and Absalon agree that cremas should be full of flavor, and well-balanced. Great cremas should leave you guessing — and wanting more.
“You need that smooth, creamy texture first. For me, having coconut is crucial, because it’s what most of us know,” Fleurimond explains. “You also need a nice balance of flavor. Cremas is an alcoholic beverage, so it should be sweet but have a little kick to put you in the holiday mood.” Absalon echoed Fluerimond’s sentiment: “It’s a very rich product that is time-consuming and you have to make it right — having good cremas is a delicacy.”
And if there’s a right way of making it, there’s a right way of drinking it, too. “I tell people to drink cremas like you would drink scotch: you pour a little bit in a cup, with or without ice, savor, and enjoy,” Absalon says.
Like many treasured holiday recipes, cremas is firmly embedded in memories, and its cultural significance is not to be downplayed. “We associate cremas with the best part of growing up: communions, weddings, and the holidays. It’s a celebration drink,” Fleurimond says.
For Absalon, creating cremas is not only a way to introduce the celebratory drink to the masses; it also serves as a tool to educate others beyond the one-sided narrative of Haiti portrayed in the media. “People see Haiti and they think about poverty and corruption, and I want to show that we have great food and culture, too,” she says.
Below, find Fleurimond's recipe for ten servings of cremas:
Mix two cans of cream of coconut (sweetened); two cans of sweetened condensed milk; one can of evaporated milk; one teaspoon of nutmeg; one teaspoon of cinnamon; two cups Rhum Barbancourt, Wrey and Nephew Overproof Rum, or grain alcohol; one tablespoon vanilla extract; one tablespoon almond extract; one teaspoon of lime juice; and the zest of one lime; and a pinch of salt. Chill for at least four hours (preferably overnight), and serve with ice.
Haitians Resurrect Honour For Historic Heroes
Newer generation reminded of roots by statues of iconic figures that went unnoticed for long time.Most countries have statues to honour iconic figures of the past, but in Haiti, statues of former heroes often go unnoticed.However, for the younger generation, they are now becoming a reminder of their roots.Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports from Port-au-Prince.By: Gabriel Elizondo for Aljazeera.com | August 19, 2018
Haiti hotel promotes ‘urban mural’ culture
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti--An historic Caribbean hotel is beautifying the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince with a stunning mural of Haitian art.Commissioned last summer by the hotel’s management team and created by renowned Haitian graffiti artist Jerry Rosembert Moise, the mural wraps around the popular Le Plaza hotel to feature the globally-famed creativity of Haitian artisans.
Little Haiti Business and Cultural District Is Coming Soon To Flatbush
FLATBUSH – Today is Haitian Flag Day and to celebrate, elected officials gathered on the corner of Newkirk and Nostrand Avenues to announce that Little Haiti Business and Cultural district is coming soon. They also unveiled a new sign for Toussaint L’Ouverture Blvd along portions of Nostrand Avenue.The proposed Little Haiti Business and Cultural District (a legislation currently awaiting to pass the City Council) will be defined as the area roughly between Avenue H and Parkside Avenue, East 16th Street and Brooklyn Avenue.
The proposed legislation is expected to go before the City Council early this summer. It is also expected to pass. The proposed area is twice that of and overlaps with Little Caribbean district that is bordered by Nostrand, Flatbush and Empire.“Little Haiti is an idea whose time has come. Brooklyn is the Port-au-Prince of America, and it’s time for the world to know and come experience all we have to offer,” Borough President Eric Adams said. “On this year’s Haitian Flag Day, we raise our voices to make Little Haiti an official designation in the heart of Flatbush.”Flatbush has a high population of Haitians. As per 2013 statistics, Brooklyn has close to 50,000 Haitian-born residents, most clustered around Flatbush. For Assembly Member Rodneyse Bichotte, the first Haitian-American to be elected to the State Legislature from New York City, having a Little Haiti district means very much.“The Little Italy model provided a blueprint of sorts for Little Haiti,” Bichotte said. “And we believe that with this designation we will see an infusion of tourism and business activity similar to the foot traffic seen in the Lower East Side after the designation of Little Italy.”
Council Member Jumaane Williams, who represents the Flatbush area and is running for Lieutenant Governor, spoke about how the Haitian culture impacts Brooklyn.“I’m proud to represent the largest group of Haitians in America, outside of Florida. Haitian culture has been and continues to be extremely impactful and beneficial in this community and in the entire city,” Williams said. “This designation is a great way for… NYC to show the world and the nation that Haitians add a cultural, educational, and economic significance to this country that cannot be ignored.”
Assembly Member N. Nick Perry had this to say: “The establishment of the ‘Little Haiti Cultural and Business District’ is significant in that it is a very public display to the entire nation; that the vast contributions of Haitian-Americans will forever be celebrated here in Brooklyn, a place where we welcome all immigrants with open arms.”
After the press conference, a new sign for Toussaint L’Ouverture Blvd, which overlaps portions of Nostrand Avenue, was unveiled. Parts of Rogers Avenue will be co-named after the Haitian Revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
“Few are aware that Haitians fought in the American Revolution on the side of the founding fathers,” Bichotte said. “In fact, there is a monument to the sacrifice of these Haitians in Savannah, Georgia.”By: Zainab Iqbal | Bklyner. | May 18, 2018
Clairin – Haiti's organic ancestral rum – is coming to America
(Photo via Instagram/rumwonk)
Organic spirits are having a moment. Craft distillers from Maine to California are producing rum, gin, vodka and whiskey from fertilizer- and pesticide-free sources. But in Haiti, there’s an entire spirit category that’s virtually entirely artisanal and organic: clairin. And its coming to America.There are more than 500 distilleries in Haiti naturally fermenting organic sugarcane in small batches to produce clairn, a high-proof white rum that goes for about $1.50 on the streets of Port au Prince.Rather remarkably, this indigenous Caribbean rum, made in rural shacks in the poorest country in the Americas, is about to get a star turn in New York City, and start hitting store shelves across the U.S. for about $40 a bottle.Ironically, lack of sophistication is turning out to be clairin’s best selling point — a rare bit of good luck in a country perpetually beset by hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides and political turmoil.Haitian slaves learned the art of distillation from their French masters before mounting the most successful slave revolt in history, driving off their European colonizers and establishing the first black republic on the planet.“Clairin is produced in the same way today as it was in 1804,” says Kate Perry, U.S. market manager for La Maison & Velier, which is importing the potent spirit and sponsoring a clairin mixology competition in New York in May. “When they kicked out the French, they won their victory, but a lot of things stopped. So they still use stills from 1790 french technology, basically old Cognac stills.”
Velier’s Luca Gargano and Daniele Biondi basically stumbled across clairin (the word means “clear” in French Haitian Creole) during a trip to Haiti in 2013, finding rough distilleries producing the spirit in the middle of sugarcane fields.
The wild-growing cane, indigenous to Haiti, is cut by hand with machetes, and the clairin is distilled from the first press only. Fermentation is spontaneous, with no yeast added, and the unfiltered rum is bottled at around 100 proof.
#spiritofhaiti #rhumexport #clairin #clairinlakay #productionnational#canneasucre #A post shared by Clairin Lakay (@clairinlakayrhum) on Villages all over Haiti have their own variety of the drink; Velier is working with multiple producers and marketing several different varieties of clairin – all made by the same basic process, but each with its own distinctive flavor.
Perry calls clairin “ancestral rum,” a close approximation of how all rums tasted 200 years ago and the grand-peré of all of the Bacardis, Captain Morgans and – yes – organic, artisanal rums we drink today.
Haïti and Clairin. Pot Still or Column Still, 100% vésou or a blend with Honey Canne… When done right ! It's a wildly amazing Rhum ! #clairin #rhumagricole #rhum #haïti #haïtiamourA post shared by Rhumdiaries (@rhumdiaries) on “Haiti’s rum is the stuff that spirit nerds want: terroir driven, open air, wild fermented with wild yeast, heritage varietals, small pot still and made for local consumption,” said Perry. And, she says, it could be the beginning of something special for Haiti’s economy as a whole.
“They have no chemicals, no fertilizers, no awful stuff we’ve filled the soil with in the rest of the world,” Perry said. “I’d love to see Haiti leverage that advantage and bill themselves as the last natural place in the western hemisphere.”By: Bob Curley for EatSipTrip April 30, 2018
Utah Symphony Message to Haiti Musicians: We Are With You and Your Country
(Utah Symphony music director Thierry Fischer (right) and Haitian conductor Pierre Leroy with participants in the National Orchestra Institute, March 30, 2018, Cap-Haitien, Haiti.(Photo: Colby Bryson)
We are one orchestra, one American organization in Utah, sharing our music to show support for Haiti. We hope our actions will inspire U.S. political leaders.
About 20 of us from the Utah Symphony recently spent a week in Cap-Haitien, in the north of Haiti. It’s about an hour-and-a-half flight from Miami. Close and yet so very, very far.
We were there for the National Orchestra Institute, a partnership with Building Leaders Using Music Education. For the second year in a row, BLUME had brought together about 100 Haitian musicians for a week of intensive training.
I’m the conductor of the Utah Symphony and I first learned about the institute last year when John Eckstein, one of our cellists, told me in an email that “we just want you to know that 17 of us are going to Haiti on our week off to teach music.” The musicians were volunteers raising their own funds for the trip from private donors, he explained, and added, “you might want to think about supporting this institute…” But I didn’t even get that far. I was already thinking to myself, “Am I free that week? I want to join them.”
This year, I was even more determined to go after recent unfortunate comments attributed to our president about Haiti and other parts of the world. I was thinking that if we can show our Haitian counterparts that we are with them and not against them, or worse, ignoring them, then we have made a difference. Even if we are just a drop of water in an ocean.
So there we were, professional musicians prepared to talk about technique and intonation to people (some of them with no electricity, very little clean water) who are taking care of sick parents and struggling to have access to education.
Their instruments were often in disrepair. We had brought many with us, violins, violas, bows, a horn, trombones, music books and scores to give them. We also brought a luthier and bow maker so they could be instructed on how to repair their own stringed instruments.
My initial reaction was to go easy — to take into consideration the way they live and the obstacles they face. But then very quickly I realized, absolutely not. They didn’t need to feel apologetic because of their current level of playing, and I didn’t need to feel sorry because some of them don’t have a proper house. Art is not just about perfection, it’s about the experience and what that experience can bring. Art can create solidarity and fraternity, as opposed to divisiveness.
I was very demanding (in French, since I'm Swiss!) but also very patient. They have said they want to create a National Orchestra of Haiti one day, so they deserved to know what it means to be an orchestra. They were so hungry to learn. For many of them, this week is the highlight of the year.
They worked hard. They had four hours of lessons with Utah Symphony musicians in the morning and three more in the afternoon with me. Our musicians instructed them on their own playing and on how to teach their instruments to others. They also led section rehearsals to prepare them for the concert that would cap our week.
As a conductor, I had much to tell them. Nobody had ever shown them how to tune as an orchestra, so that took a few minutes. And in an ensemble, you have to listen to each other so precisely — with this idea that playing exactly together, they can create a wave of beauty. You have to give them encouragement and be very patient. But they are so committed, it is beautiful to watch. Honestly, when you see them achieve the right tone, it’s breathtaking. You know that you have opened doors, and that these doors will lead them to even more discoveries. They don’t need to tell you — you see it in their eyes, in their smiles, in their body language.
They just want to work, to learn, to be better.
The last evening they performed Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, and after the concert we had a celebratory meal together. I made a little speech at the end. They kept telling us how grateful they were. But I told them they absolutely don’t realize how much we receive and learn from them with their genuine desire just to know more — about everything. Our commitment is our way to show them we love them.
It’s one thing to make yourself feel collaborative by making a donation, but it’s a completely different thing to give your time. To take the initiative and be prepared to be confronted by a different world and to give of yourself. The minimum we can do as artists is to share what drives us every day. A week a year to share and to translate what the notion of art can bring to life in general, it’s not too much.
I am so proud of the musicians of the Utah Symphony for bringing us there in the first place. We are an orchestra — just one American organization, committed to both our work in America and in developing countries like Haiti, and to the notion of sharing what sounds can bring. We hope to inspire our leaders through our actions.
Thierry Fisher is the music director of the Utah Symphony, principal guest conductor of the Seoul Philharmonic, and a frequent guest on international podiums.
By: Thierry Fisher for USAToday.com | April 30, 2018
In Brooklyn, Push for a Special Haitian District Hits Resistance
Ben Flambert sat wrapped in an apron at a barber shop on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, listening intently as Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte explained why she was leading an effort to get the city to designate the surrounding neighborhood the Little Haiti Business and Cultural District.
BEN FLAMBERT, 42, LEFT, AT A HAITIAN-OWNED BARBERSHOP IN BROOKLYN, SUPPORTS THE IDEA OF A LITTLE HAITI DISTRICT. “THE HAITIAN PRESENCE OUT HERE IS REAL STRONG,” HE SAID. “IT MAKES SENSE.”
Across the street from the barber shop are a Haitian bakery, a Haitian church and a Haitian restaurant, Ms. Bichotte, the first Haitian-American woman elected to office in New York City, explained. People of Haitian descent make up 20 percent of the Caribbean population in Flatbush and the local Haitian parade used to pass directly in front of the barber shop.
“Miami already has a Little Haiti,” Mr. Flambert, 42, a bus driver for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said as he sipped from a miniature bottle of Rhum Barbancourt. “But the Haitian presence out here is real strong. It makes sense.”
Not everyone in the central Brooklyn neighborhood agrees. Last year, an area bounded by Flatbush, Church and Nostrand Avenues was designated the Little Caribbean cultural district, making a separate Haitian district redundant, some local leaders say. Ms. Bichotte says there were plans to name the area Little Haiti dating back more than a decade.
Now, with momentum fueled by anger over recent slights by President Trump, prominent members of the Haitian community in Brooklyn and New York State are hoping the City Council will officially designate Little Haiti in May.
The designation, said members of the nonprofit group Little Haiti BK, is a recognition of the cultural role that Haitians have played in the city and the country, and a sign that the area’s Haitian community is coming-of-age. The resolution would also serve as a formal recognition by the City Council, which organizers hope will make it easier to work with tourism and business improvement officials.
“People are stepping all over us so we’ve got to empower ourselves,” Ms. Bichotte said during a meeting of the Little Haiti BK organizing committee at her district office on Flatbush Avenue.
But even as the push for a designation grows, the area’s Haitian character is already eroding, as gentrification and the movement of Haitians to the suburbs trigger changes. While the number of Haitian-Americans grew to 1.1 million in 2016, from 623,000 in 2000, New York’s place in the Haitian diaspora has been falling. In 2016, 20 percent of the country’s Haitians lived in New York, down from 30 percent in 2000. In contrast, the Haitian population in Georgia and Pennsylvania more than tripled to over 30,000 people each in 2016.
Still, Brooklyn now has more than 90,000 Haitian-Americans, giving it the third highest concentration in the country, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
“This is Haitian territory, but it’s changing,” said Ricot Dupuy, director and station manager of Radio Soleil d’Haiti, New York’s first Haitian radio station.
The proposal calls for naming an area bounded by Avenue H, Brooklyn Avenue, Parkside Avenue and East 16th Street the Little Haiti Business and Cultural District to “foster a strong sense of belonging, security, and pride among residents, businesses, nonprofits and community groups in Flatbush,” the group wrote in a letter to members of the City Council seeking their support.
The district is designed to help promote Haitian-owned businesses, but also includes proposals to create a Haitian cultural center, rename streets and erect a monument. Members of the group backing the idea acknowledge that they can’t stop gentrification but want “to leave a legacy behind, something that says we were here and that our ancestors will be proud of,” said Jackson Rockingster, president of the Haitian-American Business Network
.
Ricot Dupuy, 64, is the manager at Radio Soeil d’Haiti. “This is Haitian territory but it’s changing,” he says.
Mr. Trump’s derisive remarks about Haiti and his decision to end the program that allowed Haitians to live and work in the United States after the devastating 2010 earthquake, remind many Haitians of their history of being disparaged in the United States. After they began arriving in large numbers in the 1980s, stereotypes about Haitians committing crime or spreading diseases such as HIV were commonplace.
“This designation is about redefining the narrative,” said Rosemonde Pierre-Louis, chairwoman and co-founder of the Haitian Roundtable, a civic group of Haitian-American professionals. “What has happened over the last couple of months makes it even more urgent.”
Some of those stereotypes about Haitians exist even among other Caribbeans. Last September, Ernest Skinner, a Brooklyn political operative who questioned the need for a Little Haiti, wrote to elected officials that “Sowing division may be why Haiti has never been able to reach its full potential and why it is considered a Fourth World country despite the noble start it gave to the Independence movement among people of color.”
Ms. Bichotte demanded an apology. In an email, Mr. Skinner said he has a “record of strong and unwavering support” for all in the Caribbean diaspora.
Mr. Skinner is a political mentor of Jumaane Williams, a city councilman, who denounced the remarks, is a sponsor of the Little Haiti effort and supports having both a Little Caribbean and a Little Haiti. Mr. Williams, a candidate for lieutenant governor, said that Haiti’s “unique culture” is often maligned.
As a child, Mr. Williams said, his best friend was Haitian and he felt a strong affinity because they were both Caribbean. Mr. Williams’s parents are from Grenada. But Mr. Williams said he soon noticed that his friend often didn’t mention that he was Haitian and used his Anglicized name even among other Caribbeans.
Rodneyse Bichotte, a member of state Assembly, and Jackson Rockingster, of the Haitian American Business Network, are part of the Little Haiti BK organizing committee.
“I slowly realized there was a difference. Haiti is a part of the Caribbean but the hard truth is that it’s sometimes left out when people talk about the Caribbean,” Mr. Williams said.
John Mollenkopf, who directs the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and studies the political integration of immigrants, said, “There is this pecking order in the Caribbean with Anglophones thinking of themselves as superior to French-speaking Haitians.”
Not everyone agrees with that assessment, either. Shelley Vidia Worrell, founder and chief curator of CaribBEING, a group that promotes Caribbean art and culture and launched the Little Caribbean district, said Haitian culture and businesses are a vital part of the district.
“We see Haiti as very much being a part of the Caribbean. For us, there was never anything that needed to be separated,” Ms. Worrell said.
Jensen Desrosiers, the owner of Tonel Restaurant & Lounge, a well-known Flatbush Haitian night spot on Rogers Avenue, said he and his partners were hoping for a cultural district when they opened five years ago.
“If you have a friend in New York City and you want to give them a taste of Haitian culture, you’d bring them to this neighborhood,” Mr. Desrosiers said as he shared classic Haitian dishes such as pork griot and tassot with Ms. Bichotte, Mr. Rockingster and a local businessman, Fritz Masse Clairvil, after the Little Haiti BK planning meeting.
“Little Haiti is already happening around us,” Mr. Clairvil chimed in.
Fashion Designer Victor Glemaud Wants You to Know the Real Haiti
The knitwear designer shares his plans for a summer trip to Haiti and some memories from a recent Nile cruise.
Victor Glemaud moved to New York from Haiti with his family when he was three years old. Growing up, he returned every year, and this summer he’s bringing his fiancé and a few friends. “It’s important to share my perspective of the culture, because it’s different from what you’ve read in newspapers or heard from politicians,” he says. "Haiti has this great Caribbean vibe. It's so vibrant. But people don't think of it that way." The designer known for his colorful knits spoke to us about the trip he's planning this summer and his last great vacation: a Nile cruise.What are your favorite childhood memories of Haiti?Watching people get ready for Carnival. Everyone makes spectacular outfits, there’s music; it’s really fun. And there’s always a lot of sour rum punch, so it gets really festive. And eating the delicious fruit: There are these dense, super sweet mangoes and tiny pineapples.Does Haitian style inspire your work?I'm always inspired by it. Growing up, I remember my father and my aunts and uncles always looking very put together. They have such an interesting sense of color. The way I use prints and stripes and colors comes from seeing and living with Haitian people and seeing the care they put into dressing.What’s the plan for this trip?My mother told me about Île-à-Vache, just off Jacmel, with the clearest blue water. We’ll stay at Abaka Bay Resort or Port Morgan. In Jacmel, we’ll use Hotel Florita as our base. I’d like to take lessons at Surf Haiti. Local kids take you out on the waves. Then we’ll do a day in Port-au-Prince—I want to check out Maxime Boutique Hotel.Any must-sees for first-timers?I can’t wait to show everyone the Citadel, an early 19th-century fortress, and the ruins of the Sans-Souci palace, which was the home of the king during the same time and used to be one of the most incredible buildings in the Caribbean. They’re both in the north, in the mountains. They’re magnificent.Dishes you can’t miss?Fresh fish, djon djon black mushroom rice, and pork griot, which are like yummy fried pork bites. When I host dinner parties at home in New York, I’ll pick up plates of everything at Le Soleil, a Haitian restaurant in Midtown. My friends love it.Where else have you been lately?My fiancé and I planned a last minute trip to Egypt to celebrate my birthday. We started in Cairo and split our time between the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton, then took a four-night trip down the Nile on the Sanctuary Sun IV. It was truly magical. I loved seeing the pyramid in Saqqara and the temple of Isis on Philae.What was the boat like?It was a wooden boat, which I loved—I wanted a smaller boat, more cozy, a little chicer. It was never bursting at the seams with people. And we learned more about the culture and the food: the bread is fabulous wherever you go in Egypt, they have the most perfect cucumbers and beautiful tomatoes. And we got really into Egyptian wine. At first I was like, 'Do I really want to drink Egyptian wine?' But the bottles of white and rosé that we tried were all delicious.
By: Andrea Whittle for Cntraveler.com | April 3, 2018
Over the Line: Haitian and Dominican Artists Team Up for Exhibit
Call them artists without borders.More than a dozen Dominican and Haitian artists will come together to showcase artwork depicting the relationship between the two neighboring Caribbean countries. At the exhibit “Bordering the Imaginary,” opening at Bric House on March 14, artists from both countries will explore the history of the island they share. The show was inspired by a controversial 2013 ruling that stripped Dominican citizenship from children of Haitian descent, and the ignorance that its curator saw displayed at panels and protests about the ruling.
. . .The exhibit features 40 pieces from 19 artists, and is split into three sections. The first examines the history of the island, the second looks at the border area between the two nations, and the last is a joint multimedia project by Dominican-American artist Scherezade Garcia and Haitian-American artist Vladimir Cybil Charlier. Their section, titled “Memories of a Utopian Island and the Future,” features an animated video and an installation exploring resistance and race.
. . .The exhibit features 40 pieces from 19 artists, and is split into three sections. The first examines the history of the island, the second looks at the border area between the two nations, and the last is a joint multimedia project by Dominican-American artist Scherezade Garcia and Haitian-American artist Vladimir Cybil Charlier. Their section, titled “Memories of a Utopian Island and the Future,” features an animated video and an installation exploring resistance and race.
On March 17, both artists will join a panel discussion about the island’s shared history in art. The countries have much in commmon, said Garcia.THE EVENT:“Bordering the Imaginary” at Bric House:647 Fulton St. at Rockwell Places Brooklyn, NY -Fort Greene Neighborhood(718) 855–7882www.brica
In New Orleans, Whispers of Haiti Become a Brassy Mardi Gras Shout
NEW ORLEANS — Régine Chassagne was standing barefoot in her rambling New Orleans home on a recent weekday, showing members of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band how to play the horn parts for her latest musical project.
It was a galloping Carnival anthem played in the Haitian style and sung largely in Haitian Creole, a language the jazz players did not understand. Ms. Chassagne, a Canadian-born daughter of Haitian exiles, described their parts with swooping hand gestures. At one point, she told them to play “like fireworks — poof!”
The jazzmen, masters of translating emotion into sound, nodded along, unfazed.
Ms. Chassagne, 41, is a founder of the rock group Arcade Fire, a French speaker of mixed racial heritage who grew up in Montreal playing the piano to old Louis Armstrong recordings. More recently, she has become a prominent advocate for the Haitian people and for a Haitian culture that has had an outsize, if not always recognizable, influence on New Orleans, where she and her husband, Win Butler, have lived for about three years.
For this year’s Carnival season, the period of revelry before Lent, Ms. Chassagne and Mr. Butler, the Arcade Fire frontman, will highlight their adopted city’s Haitian connections with the kind of primer its residents readily understand: a raucous procession by the couple’s Haitian-themed Mardi Gras troupe, the Krewe du Kanaval. Founded in collaboration with the New Orleans jazz hub Preservation Hall and rounded out by local and Haitian musicians, the krewe plans to parade through the streets of the French Quarter and Treme on Tuesday, a week before Mardi Gras, and put on a free street party.
It is likely to be the loudest love song to Haiti to emanate from New Orleans in many decades, at a time when many are still stinging from a coarse insult from the president and the end of a humanitarian program that allowed more than 45,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States.
“I’m the one pushing for it,” Ms. Chassagne said of the band’s focus on Haiti, “and I’m pushing for it because it’s the story of my parents, and the culture. Their culture is what made me who I am.”
Some in New Orleans say the same could be said for the city.
“There’s this huge connection between the cultures that hasn’t really been explored,” said Branden Lewis, 30, a trumpeter with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. “My existence is testament to that fact, and I don’t really know anything about Haiti.”
Mr. Lewis grew up in Southern California, but his family members are Louisiana Creoles who trace their roots to people of African descent who came to Louisiana from Haiti in the 19th century.
It is a common New Orleans story. In 1809 and 1810, the population of the city roughly doubled when more than 10,000 French speakers from the colony of St. Domingue — whites, slaves and free people of color — arrived from eastern Cuba, according to Ned Sublette, the author of the 2008 book “The World That Made New Orleans.” They had gone to Cuba from what is now Haiti amid the tumult of the Haitian revolution, but were subsequently expelled by the Spanish.
The new arrivals made a profound mark on New Orleans, influencing its legal profession, cuisine, journalism, politics and music. In the book, Mr. Sublette argues that they delayed the Americanization of the city “for perhaps two generations.”
But Americanization eventually won out, and the French language faded. And while family names familiar to any Haitian — Dumas, Toussaint, Barthelemy — remain common in New Orleans, the Haitian influence has become so prevalent, so deeply mixed into the city’s complex cultural stew, that it can be difficult to pick out.
“Haiti definitely had an influence on New Orleans, but it’s hard to see if you’re not looking,” said Donald Link, a local chef who has been researching the city’s culinary ties to the Caribbean world.
The idea of outsider rock stars making a mark on Mardi Gras has prompted some grumbling in a city that fiercely guards its cultural traditions. Mr. Lewis said some locals had criticized the Krewe du Kanaval as an act of cultural appropriation. It would not be the first time such charges have been made against Ms. Chassagne or her band, whose other members are white and which has come under fire before for adopting Haitian influences and iconography.
In 2016, they set off an intense online debate among New Orleanians when they joined with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for a New Orleans-style parade for David Bowie, who died in January of that year.
Ms. Chassagne and her husband, Win Butler, Arcade Fire’s frontman, have lived in New Orleans for about three years. Credit: William Widmer for The New York Times
“Shouldn’t you have at least some tie to New Orleans to get a second line?”one commenter said, referring to the city’s tradition of jazz funeral parades.
Mr. Butler shrugged off the complaints on a recent evening while sipping rum on his back porch with Ben Jaffe, Preservation Hall’s creative director. Thousands turned out for the Bowie parade, Mr. Butler said. Thousands were moved.
“There’s not even one part of me that’s like, that was a bad idea — like, ‘Oh no, we’ve ruined New Orleans,’” he said.
Mr. Jaffe, a New Orleans native, agreed, arguing that the city has always made room for respectful newcomers looking to make a mark on the culture. His parents, Allan and Sandra Jaffe, were music fans from Philadelphia who stumbled into New Orleans’s traditional jazz scene while on their honeymoon in 1960. The next year, they opened Preservation Hall, playing a major role in the traditional jazz revival in the city.
“That was one of the reasons they came down here — to sort of absorb that thing that they were attracted to,” he said. “Isn’t that what New Orleans has always been, though?”
Ms. Chassagne’s attraction to the Caribbean world feels like an effort to reclaim a heritage that history tried to rob from her. Her parents fled, separately, from Haiti in the 1960s, amid the violence imposed by supporters of the Haitian dictator François Duvalier. Several of her mother’s relatives were killed in a 1964 massacre in the town of Jérémie, and her mother, traumatized, never returned.
Ms. Chassagne would not visit the island until after the band became famous. She describes a Montreal childhood absorbing wisps of Haiti: her parents chatting in Creole, the way her mother danced in the kitchen, the Christmas parties with kompa music on the stereo.
A fair-skinned member of a family of many hues, Ms. Chassagne also remembers listening as darker-skinned relatives talked about the way white people would treat them.
Now, she and Mr. Butler stand out in other ways. New Orleans is still adapting to having the famous indie-rock couple in its midst: One city government official recalled seeing the pair on the street at Halloween, and mistaking them for local residents in really convincing Arcade Fire costumes.
In the past few days, Ms. Chassagne and Mr. Butler have been scrambling with last-minute details. They have corralled into their Carnival project Haitian-Americans including Leyla McCalla, an unclassifiable multi-instrumentalist who performs some songs in Creole, and Charly Pierre, a chef and a winner of the Food Network’s “Chopped” contest, who will be providing some of the food.
The couple has also been reaching out to the Haitian immigrant community. On Jan. 11, Ms. Chassagne and Mr. Jaffe promoted the festivities on Radio Gonbo Kreyol, a New Orleans internet radio station that serves Creole speakers, as stories began to circulate that President Trump had crudely disparaged Haiti in a White House meeting.
The Census Bureau estimates that fewer than 500 people in metropolitan New Orleans claim Haitian ancestry, but Barthelemy Jolly, a Haitian native and vice president of the radio station, believes the Haitian immigrant community is thousands strong. Many of them are taxi drivers and hotel maids, he said, and they have tended, over the years, to keep a low profile.
But Mr. Trump’s comments prompted scores of Haitians to march together at the Women’s March on Jan. 20, which passed through the city’s central business district and the French Quarter, bearing Haitian flags. Mr. Jolly said that he expected many more to come to the Krewe du Kanaval party.
“The Haitian community, they’re going to be out there,” he said.
So the possibility looms of a party where second-line rhythms bleed into Haitian mizik rasin, where the vestiges of Caribbean roots mingle with the new.
If nothing else, it will probably be a good time, though Ms. Chassagne hopes it will be something more. “If we want things to move forward we need to experience each other’s company,” she said. “You can’t just retract in your corner.”
'Voodoo' tour of Haiti launched to raise development money
Vodou 'a very healing religion,' organizing says, but 'has its negative sides, too'
A P.E.I. tour company is offering Islanders an opportunity this spring to learn more about the religious culture of Haiti, while helping with economic development in the country at the same time.Sagrado Tours has partnered with locals to produce the Sacred Vodou Tour."I lot of people, I think, in North America, mistakenly have a negative view of sacred Vodou," said David MacKay of Sagrado Tours."I've found it, through my study and my experience, a very healing religion, a very positive religion. It's like a lot of religions, I guess, it has its negative sides, too."MacKay said many of the modern negative views of Vodou, commonly known as voodoo in Canada, date from the dictatorships of the Duvaliers in the 1960s and 1970s."Museums, Vodou temples, the waterfall at Saut d' Eau. There's so many nice places that you can visit," he said.
Sustainable development
Guyere Theodore of Léogâne, just south of Port au Prince, will act as cultural interpreter on the tour.Some of the proceeds from the seven-day tour will go toward development in Léogâne. MacKay has been working on development projects in the area for several years."We focus on sustainable development," MacKay said."The backyard poultry is going ahead and they're making money, somewhere around $400 or $500 American a year, which sounds small, but that doubles people's income."
Travel advisory
The tour is scheduled for March 28 to April 4. It is all-inclusive at about $3,500, which does not include airfare to Port au Prince.Haiti is under a travel advisory from the government of Canada. The advisory includes a warning about high crime rates in parts of the country and political tensions, and says Canadians should exercise a high degree of caution.MacKay said he has never felt threatened during his visits to Haiti.Sagrado has plans to offer more culturally themed tours of Haiti in the future.By: Kevin Yarr | CBC News | Feb 05, 2018