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Prologue
Faith and Alphabets in Motion Haiti's brilliant buses (tap-tap) activate the streets of Port-auPrince with a glittering mix of carnival, church, and cryptoVodou. They heighten all Haiti with their rainbow colors. Equally amazing are their names and mottoes: citations of protection from above (covert or outright allusions to the spirits, or Iwa), assertions of the self, and social criticism. Art captures speed, art captures transport, all under an affectionate nickname, tap-tap, for fast motion.
By way of cultural preparation for this heritage, start with Albert J. Raboteau's A Fire in the Bones: In 1862, a teacher named Harriet Ware attended a funeral on one of the South Carolina sea islands. Ware, a white missionary, was surprised by the ceremony that her black pupils, all of them recently freed slaves, devised to observe the burial. "As we drew near to the grave we heard all the children singing their A, B, C, through and through again, as they stood waiting round the grave for the rest to assemble....Each child had his school-book or picture-book...in his hand-another proof that they consider their lessons as in some sort religious exercises." (Raboteau 1995:1) "Praying the ABC's," as Raboteau translates the phenomenon, inspires reflection on faith's shaping power in the naming and embellishment of the Afro-Haitian bus. There is analogous "capture" of writing, prayer, and self-assertion in the complex of messages that roll down the streets of the Black Republic. The mindset behind the capture is Afro-Atlantic. In Haiti, using vernacular assessments, we trace the roots of such thought to the cultures of Rada (Fon, Ewe, Yoruba), PetwoLemba (Kongo and Angola), and Ibo Lele or Ibo Suama (Igbo Elele, Igbo Isu-Ama). In searching the roots I concentrate mainly on Yoruba and Kongo, arguing that from these documented fonts of Vodou culture came important models (but not the only ones) for the art and naming of the tap-taps of Haiti.
To trace "African influence" to traditions predating the invention of the automobile and the coming of Western alphabetic writing, one must recognize the fact of precontact geographic mobility and graphic sign communication among key sub-Saharan civilizations. Long before the advent of the truck or car, the Yoruba, like the Mande, were famed for long-distance trading. The Yoruba, as Olabiyi Babalola...