Living & Arts

Celebrating Haitian culture

Celebrating-haitian-culture

Stephanie Sampedro | Phoenix Staff

The band Djarara performs in the Haiti Awareness Series.

In print | April 16, 2009

This past Friday, Swarthmore’s Coalition for a Free Haiti hosted the Haiti Awareness Series, an all-day event with the goal of raising awareness about the current situation in Haiti, a country that, CFFH’s co-founder and a key organizer of the event Jacqueline Bailey-Ross ’12 said, “has been abused by the media and universal ignorance for so long.” Friday’s series started with a screening of the documentary “The Other Side of the Water,” continued with a CFFH-hosted reception in Upper Tarble, and culminated in a performance by the band Djarara.

“The Other Side of the Water” depicts the stories of Haitian immigrants living in New York City, with a particular focus on Djarara, which the film’s official website calls “a group of young immigrants who take an ancient music from the hills of Haiti and reinvent it on the streets of Brooklyn.” Rara is a musical genre that originally fueled Haiti’s rebellion against French dominion and continues to function as a voice of political protest. Recently, immigration trends have brought the genre to the U.S.’s Eastern Seaboard, particularly in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. The documentary follows Pé Yves, a poet and veteran leader of the Rara movement. According to the website, “‘The Other Side of the Water’ is about the struggle to merge the traditional and the modern; the island and the City; the imagined and the real.”

The screening and informational reception provided considerable context and hype for Djarara’s subsequent performance in Upper Tarble. The audience even led the band into the library for a continuation of the performance. Michelle Walters ’12 said, “The show was really remarkable, especially the students’ involvement.”

“I think the concert was a great success. […] At first I was a bit worried, but Martin Warner and Dean [Tim] Sams seemed okay with it as long as they didn’t stay for long. There were also some astonished students looking on from their books. For some reason the library performance was very liberating,” Bailey-Ross said.

It is not surprising that the performance provoked such a reaction; Djarara’s unique blend of Caribbean-style instrumentals with more recognizable hip-hop beats made the concert an accessible, adrenaline-surging experience. Walters said, “Haiti was not a country whose culture or issues I was very aware of until now. It’s nice to have that kind of broadened perspective.”
Friday’s activities were not the first awareness-raising efforts the Coalition for a Free Haiti has hosted this year. Earlier this semester, the group screened the documentary “The Agronomist” to a large student turnout. Bailey-Ross said, “The Haiti Awareness Series was conceived from the notion that a week was not long enough.” The Coalition for a Free Haiti will continue to host events throughout the school year with the aim of raising awareness for Haitian issues. If last Friday’s series was any indication, this exposure to Haitian culture will prove both fascinating and enjoyable.