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Rara ! Vodou,
power, and performance in Haiti and its diaspora / Elizabeth
McAlister. - Berkeley : University of California press,
2002. - XVIII-259 p. : ill. ; 24 cm +
a sound CD.
ISBN 0-520-22822-7
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| With this book,
Elizabeth McAlister, an involved observer, makes an incalculable contribution to our musical and cultural
literature.
Edwige Danticat |
DESCRIPTION : Rara is a vibrant annual festival
in Haiti, when followers of the Afro-Creole religion called Vodou
march loudly into public space to take an active role in politics.
During this weeks of Lent, Rara bands parade for miles, playing
music, dancing, performing rituals for Afro-Haitian spirits,
for the ancestors, and for local « big men ».
Working deftly with highly original
ethographic material, Elizabeth McAlister shows how Rara bands
harness the power of Vodou spirits and the recently dead to broadcast
coded points of view with historical, gendered, and transnational
dimensions. In this first-ever book on Rara, she not only brings
the Afro-Creole religious dimensions of the festival to light
but also discusses the political uses Haitians are making of
Rara, both in Haiti and in the United States.
Carefully researched, deeply
thoughtful, and extremely well written, this book includes a
CD featuring Rara's lively, percussive music, as well as photographs
by veteran photojournalist Chantal Regnault.
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| CONTENTS |
Introducing Rara
- Work and Play, Pleasure and
Performance
- Vulgarity and the Politics of
the Small Man
- Mystical Work : Spirits
on Parade
- Rara and « the Jew » :
Premodern Anti-Judaism in Postmodern Haiti
- Rara as Popular Army :
Hierarchy, Militarism, and Warfare
- Voices under Domination :
Rara and the Politics of Insecurity
- Rara in New York City :
Transnational Popular Culture
Appendix, Glossary, Notes, Sources,
Index
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| mise-à-jour : 6 décembre 2005 |
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