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Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. By Michael Largey. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. xvi + 284, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, musical notation, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $60.00 cloth, $25.00 paper)
The relationship between local folk culture and elitist culture is often constructed simply as oppositional. The reality, however, is much more complex a complexity well illustrated in Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. Author Michael Largey points out the role that composers in Haiti have played in negotiating boundaries between elite and folk, and religion and politics, and in the ambivalent relations between Haiti and the United States (occupiers or supporters?) since Haitian independence.
According to Largey, Haitian and African American musicians and authors have - multiple times - ignored, "discovered," and repackaged Haitian folk music in forms amenable to aesthetic legitimization and international consumption as a commodity. The roots of Haitian music in Vodou rhythms, rituals, and cosmology have been framed as a basis for authenticity in Haitian folklore both by those who denigrate local Haitian culture and by those who enshrine it as speaking the truths of a people. These roots have been co-opted...