Lyrics of LOVE & HAITI

How did a guy who grew up in Connecticut and went to Princeton become one of this Caribbean nation's leading singers of political protest?

Gary Marx, Chicago Tribune.

It's well past midnight when Richard Morse and his 10-piece band kicked into gear with a driving beat and searing lyrics that capture the agony of this Caribbean nation.

"Life is a war, friends go down, fighting for freedom and independence," Morse sang as a small crowd pushed to the edge of the stage. "Betrayal. Hypocrisy. Stabbing in the back. Swimming in the water, beware of the shark attack."

His biting lyrics fit into a tradition of Haitian musicians speaking their minds and drawing inspiration from the violence and chaos that have long characterized life in this Caribbean nation.

Over the years, Morse -- like many popular musicians here -- has had concerts disrupted by armed thugs and songs banned from the radio. Other musicians have fled into exile after being threatened by Haiti's gallery of military rulers and assorted rogues.

Whether by luck or skill, Morse has managed to survive while continuing to pump out first-class political songs at a time when Haiti's youth are increasingly listening to hip-hop, dance music and gangsta rap.

"I live in a country where I've been through 21 governments," Morse explained. "I have friends getting killed. You are inspired by what's going on around you, and this is what we are living through, and it doesn't end."

But Morse is not a Haitian citizen. In fact, he grew up in Connecticut, attended an elite boarding school and graduated from Princeton in 1979 with a degree in anthropology. The son of a prominent Ivy League professor and famous Haitian entertainer (Emerante de Pradines, who once taught at the Yale School of Drama), Morse never worked as an anthropologist. Instead, he picked up the bass guitar and joined the punk rock band "The Groceries," which played sold-out gigs at CBGB, the Mud Club and other new wave haunts in New York City. Morse said he was thrown out of the band after five or six years over musical differences.

With nowhere else to go, Morse went to Haiti 20 years ago looking for his roots and his own musical groove. He seems to have found both, while also filling the role of the wise and eccentric expatriate whose day job happens to be running the Hotel Oloffson, the late 19th Century inn that served as the centerpiece of Graham Greene's novel set in Haiti, "The Comedians."

On stage, dressed in all black with a white scarf, dark sunglasses and braided hair, the light-skinned Morse looks like a hipper, leaner version of the late John Belushi in his "Blues Brothers" days.

But his band, RAM, is anything but lightweight as it melds riffs from The Clash with blues and funk and large doses of Haitian compass, voodoo and other traditional sounds. Morse's songs are often clever remakes of classics whose updated lyrics draw inspiration from Haitian proverbs.

"I love his music," said Carl Codio, an engineer at Audiotek, a Port-au-Prince recording studio where RAM is making its sixth album. "He tells what's real, what's going on, like Bob Marley."

Although Morse has written his share of love songs, RAM's lyrics in English and Creole tackle everything from military repression to the devastating impact of the international trade sanctions on Haiti in the early 1990s.

In the 1993 song "Boat People Blues," Morse writes of the bloody aftermath of a coup. "The government was gone and there was blood running under my feet. Fifty thousand people took their leaky boats out to sea. Now they're sailing in the ocean, heading off to Miami."

Ten years later, in "Met Kolibri," or "The Visa Song," Morse makes a plaintive cry for exile. "It can be Santo Domingo, the Bahamas, Miami, Cuba. It doesn't matter. Give me a visa."

More than entertainment

Experts say music has long served as more than just entertainment in Haiti, where widespread illiteracy, a history of resistance and deep African cultural roots elevated music into an important vehicle for communicating opinions about everything from politics to religion.

The tradition dates back hundreds of years, to French colonial rule and slavery in Haiti. The songs often employ a mocking humor, whether directed at a slave owner or an unpopular president. "In Haiti the majority has never had political enfranchisement," explained Elizabeth McAlister, a professor and Haitian music expert at Wesleyan University. "The majority had to find ways to express themselves in a public space, and music was key."

McAlister said music also became a popular form of expression in Haiti because lyrics can be written in a way to mask their true meaning and, thus, pose less of a direct threat to the powerful. In Haiti, it's called "voye pwen," Creole for "sending a point."

One early example is the 1920s song "Angelique O!" composed by Morse's grandfather, the famous troubadour Auguste de Pradines, known as Candio. The song describes a domestic squabble between Angelique and her lover but also served as a call for U.S. troops to leave Haiti, which they occupied from 1915 to 1934.

"The chorus was, 'Angelique O! Go home to your mother's house,'" explained Gage Averill, dean of the music department at the University of Toronto. "It was interpreted by the popular class as, 'Yankee, go home.'"

But the politically powerful also used music to sway public opinion. Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Haiti's notorious strongman who ruled the country from 1957 to 1971, hired musicians to sing tunes praising his every accomplishment, whether real or imagined.

Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who took over when his father died and led Haiti until 1986, also banned the work of musicians critical of the Duvaliers' rule and forced many into exile, along with scores of artists, doctors, economists and other opponents.

"Thugs would show up with guns at a concert and fire their weapons to intimidate people," said Averill. "That was in full swing in the 1980s."

Jean-Claude Duvalier's ouster in a popular uprising along with the beginning of the Haitian roots music movement, which combined rock and traditional rhythms, breathed new life into political songwriting.

It coincided with the emergence of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a popular slum priest who in 1990 was challenging Haiti's military junta. The transition from military rule to democracy was given a huge lift when Boukman Eksperyans, the top Haitian roots band, recorded the song, "Kem'-M Pa Sote," which roughly translated means, "I'm Not Afraid."

The song doesn't mention by name Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril, the leader of Haiti's military junta. But its lyrics criticized the corrupt and inept military government and galvanized public opinion against it.

"When something is wrong, I sing about it. I take a position on it," explained Theodore "Lolo" Beaubrun, the leader of Boukman Eksperyans.

In 1990, "I Am Not Afraid" became the most popular song at Haiti's Carnival, an annual event when Haitians take to the streets to drink rum, dance and listen to the often allegorical and cryptic political messages expressed in songs.

Avril soon resigned, paving the way for elections Aristide won in a landslide. But the newly elected president was ousted in a coup in September 1991, igniting a battle of Boukman Eksperyans, RAM and other bands against a military regime responsible for the deaths of 4,000 civilians between 1991 and 1994.

Boukman Eksperyans led the way with the 1992 song titled "Dangerous Crossroads," which includes the lyrics, "if you're a cheater, get out of here, if you are an assassin, get out of here," to protest Aristide's ouster.

Military authorities banned the song from Carnival, and the band later fled into exile, joining other prominent Haitian musicians, such as folksinger Manno Charlemagne.

Parable song

Morse decided to stay put and wrote his most popular song, "Fey" (Leaf), a parable about a leaf that falls from a tree during a storm but has yet to die. The lyrics captured the hope of Morse and many others that Aristide would return to power. The song provoked a backlash from military authorities, which sent armed thugs into the Oloffson as RAM launched into the tune during a 1994 concert. The band continued playing "Fey," as it did the following week when paramilitary troops once again intervened during a concert.

At one point, RAM stopped playing music for several months because of the threats from military authorities. When the band started up again, Morse required people attending its weekly concert at the Oloffson to check their weapons at the door. The guns sometimes filled a footlocker.

'They'll send the military after you'

"When you write music in the States and you are in a punk band, no one cares," Morse said. "I don't think that Ronald Reagan ever had The Dead Kennedys arrested. But here big time -- they'll send the military after you."

Morse celebrated when U.S. troops landed in Haiti in late 1994 and returned Aristide to the presidency. Yet, in recent years, Morse, Beaubrun and other prominent musicians turned against Aristide, whom they now view as a corrupt and dangerous leader who armed supporters and stifled dissent.

Beaubrun said he received death threats from Aristide militants after becoming a leading member of the opposition. Morse said Aristide's aides first tried to pay him to sing songs favorable of the government and, when he refused, threatened him.

Even with Aristide gone -- the president fled Haiti in February 2004 in the face of a growing rebellion and U.S. pressure -- the two band leaders say they continue living in fear of gunmen loyal to Aristide and other forces.

Still, neither musician is backing off.

RAM's latest album, which is scheduled for release in early summer, includes a song tentatively titled "Jamaican Vacation." The song derides Aristide's secretive, pre-dawn departure from Haiti into exile.

The former president traveled to the Central African Republic and Jamaica before settling in South Africa.

"I hear you're off in Jamaica. Didn't have to be that way," Morse sings to a lilting Caribbean rhythm. "Tell me about the weather. Gotta get yourself together. Find somebody to love."

Reproduced with permission of Chicago Tribune.