Content area
Full Text
MCALISTER, ELIZABETH A. Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002, 259 pp. Appendix, glossary, end notes, bibliography, discography, index, compact-disc. ISBN: 0-520-22823-5. $24.95.
Elizabeth McAlister is certainly qualified to write a book on the Haitian musical tradition known as Rara. She earned a bachelor degree in anthropology from Vassar College and two master's degrees in African American studies and history and a doctorate in American studies from Yale. Furthermore, one of McAlister's specialties is Haitian Vodou, a religion with which she became intimately acquainted during multiple visits to Haiti between 1990 and 1995. As one would expect, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora (Rara! henceforth) reflects the strengths of McAlister's interdisciplinary background, as well as her extensive firsthand knowledge of Haitian history, religion, politics, and music. From one point of view, McAlister's unique skill set constitutes a refreshing change of pace, methodologically speaking. Rather than delving into detailed musical analysis, decoding local epistemologies of musical performance, or developing yet another quirky system of transcription, she instead spends her time exploring divination and magic, analyzing dialogic speech codes, and examining Rara as part of the historical struggle of Haiti's poor, oppressed majority to obtain basic human rights on both the local and international stage. Another plus is the CD of field recordings that is included with the book, partially to offset her lack of musical transcriptions. Due to McAlister's interdisciplinary, multifaceted approach, Rara! is of intrinsic value to anyone who is involved or interested in academic discourses about race and resistance, class struggle, and/or the various cultures of the Caribbean and the African diaspora.
In terms of validating McAlister's rather unconventional way of approaching a musical ethnography, I am not trying to say that similar types of studies in the field of ethnomusicology systematically lack proper attention to what some would call "extramusical" events or variables. Rather, I am arguing that McAlister makes a trade. She marvelously reveals the social, religious, political, and historical dimensions that surround, penetrate, and constitute Rara with a degree of precision that some ethnomusicologists could never match. On the other hand, she does so at the expense of the musical aspects of Rara, which...