We’ve all been writing and talking a lot about the devastation in Haiti and it’s been heartwarming to see the collective response.  But here’s a different, non-earthquaked view of Haiti.

Harte Recordings, together with the estate of Alan Lomax, and in collaboration with The Library Of Congress and the The Association for Cultural Equity has just released a new box set of Lomax’s original recordings of Haitian music in the 1930′s.   You can learn more about the project on their blog.   This is a wonderful example of a cultural sustainability project.  While so much in Haiti has been destroyed, these recordings will live on.

The music is rich and vibrant, and I know you’ll enjoy the music as much as I have.  They provided us with a few track for you to preview, which I’ll post here.

1ST BANN MADIGRA- Moyiz

LOUIS FORVILICE & AND GROUP OF HAITIAN MEN – Romance de la guerre

Bama Bama sung by Zora Neale Hurston

Here’s how they describe the project.

Lomax and his then-newlywed wife Elizabeth (aged 20 and 19, respectfully) worked in Haiti from December 1936 until April 1937, documenting music and ritual at the behest of his colleague and friend, Zora Neale Hurston, and under the auspices of the Library Of Congress.  He arrived just two years after the brutal 19-year occupation by the United States Marines, when resentment against the U.S. ran high.  The Lomaxes were part of an influx of talented and highly distinguished U.S. artists and anthropologists to whom  Haitians opened their arms, despite still-fresh memories of the military incursion.  These U.S. citizens were drawn to the island’s distinctive culture, its striking musical and visual arts, and its people–as well as by a fascination with the sensationalist accounts of Vodou, the synchretistic local religion that had risen out of religious beliefs and practices originating in West Africa.  In the course of his journey, Lomax recorded more than fifty hours of music, made copious notes, diagrams and drawings, and shot rare film footage.  None of this material has been available to the general public before.

These were the early days of field recording, and Alan recorded to aluminum disc (500 in all).  When Lomax revisited these recordings in the 1970s, he deemed them unworthy of release due to the high level of sound distortion and surface noise.  So they sat, along with his notes and film footage, for 30 years until the sound quality could be miraculously improved through current cutting edge technology.  With recently- developed equipment never used on sound recordings before, the Grammy-award winning team at the Magic Shop in New York City were able to de-noise and bring the recordings to clear and vibrant life.

The results have been thematically organized into ten volumes, each showcasing a specific style of music that Lomax encountered.   “Meringue” numbers introduce the set’s first volume, combining early Ellington melodies with Hoosier Hot Shot joyfulness and Sun Ra otherworldliness.  The sounds of Vodou worship are well represented and further illuminated by color film footage on the next disc.  The native Mardi Gras music is collected on another, capturing a glorious, bombastic musical tradition which would find its way to New Orleans and beyond.  Lomax recorded hours of an angelic but otherwise completely unknown singer named Francilia, whose amazingly distinctive voice and style are heard for the first time outside of Haiti on a volume devote entirely to her.  The set also contains a generous sampling of children’s songs and performances of the “Troubadours,” small bands of musicians who walked the streets of Port-au-Prince, much like the early cojunto groups of Texas.  Ludovic Lamothe, the famed Haitian classical pianist, was recorded for the first time by Lomax playing the songs that his international reputation would be built upon, as was Zora Neal Hurston, singing songs from her youth.  The final volume is filled with the “Romances,” a now-extinct style of music brought to Haiti from France during its period of colonization.

All these musical styles and others are thoroughly discussed in Gage Averill’s meticulously-researched notes, while the making of and circumstances surrounding the recordings are detailed in Lomax’s journal.

In conjunction with the release of the set, the Association for Cultural Equity will repatriate the full 50-hour set of digitally restored, pre-mastered and catalogued Lomax recordings to the Haitian people as part of its Caribbean Repatriation Program and The Clinton Global Initiative For Haiti.  This set is produced by Anna Lomax Wood, Jeffery Greenberg and David Katznelson.

You can buy the box set on Amazon.com.