---

Book review by Rene Devis Published Feb 15, 2001 Most of us listen or dance to Haitian music, but vaguely know anything about the Haitian music industry, its roots and history? Dr.Gage Averill, in his book; “A Day for the Hunter a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti)” provides descriptive background information and in-depth knowledge about the interaction of Haitian music with power. Gage Averill is the chairman of the music department at New York University and a former Haitian music columnist for Beat Magazine for eight years. In addition, he worked as an associate professor of music and Latin American Studies at Chicago University. Throughout his tenure at the University Dr. Gage Averill worked intensively to promote Haitian music and culture. His effort has led to the creation of the Haitian Root and Culture Festival in Florida which has since transcended into different festivals. In his book, Dr. Gage’s book gives an integrated account of the structure and function of Haitian music within Haitian society. A Day of the Hunter and a Day for the Prey is ideally suited as a background reading for anyone who is interested in learning about Haitian music. Chapters are pedagogically constructed with testimonies from the most recognized names in Haitian music. Click here to buy this book	Permission to use this material was granted to Heritagekonpa by The University of Chicago & Dr. Gage Averill. Reprinted from A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey published by the University of Chicago Press, Copyright @ 1997 BY The University of Chicago. All rights reserved www.press.uchicago.edu The Haitian Music Industry and the Institutional Structure of Music Production. The aesthetics of popular musical production, the pleasures of its consumption, and the ideological content of its texts all emerge in relation to the institutional structure of the music industry, and it would be a serious mistake indeed to consider the ideology of popular music apart from its material form. While I haven't attempted a full political economy of Haitian music in the confines of the present work, I do want to sketch a portrait of the industry, its peculiar local physiognomy, and its connections to global industries in order more properly to contextualize Haitian popular music. Local music systems have developed within the loosely interconnected system of globalized capitalism. The worldwide export from the developed capitalist countries of what Leslie Sklair calls the "culture-ideology of consumerism" has been "the fuel that powers the motor of global capitalism."46 Various types of local and undercapitalized culture industries evolved in dependent relation to the global system; the Haitian commercial music industry provides a particularly vivid example of a culture industry in the periphery.	In the early part of the century, Haiti's small elite, negligible middle class, and impoverished rural peasantry failed to inspire major investments in its recording industry, even during the American occupation. Trailing far behind the industrialized countries in access to recording technology, Haiti wasn't typical of the Caribbean or even of many developing regions. Recording projects began in India in 1902, and 14,000 records had been recorded for Gramophone in Asia and North Africa before 1910.47 In Cuba, the first recordings were made soon after 1910, and by the mid-1920's, American and British companies had a substantial catalogue of Cuban recordings of such groups as Sexteto Habanero and the Septeto National. In 1937, German-Swiss immigrant Ricardo Widmaier recorded Jazz Guignard at his Port-au-Prince radio station HH3W, pressing a small number of 78 rpm recordings as gifts for friends, but the recordings were never released commercially. Using a field cylinder recorder, anthropologist Harold Courlander preserved peasant folk and liturgical music from the 1930s until the 1950s and recorded a series of noncommercial albums for Folkways Records, including one of parlor méringues by the Duroseau family chamber group in 1951.	In addition, a few exploratory recordings of artists like Auguste "Kandjo" de Pradines, Dodof Legros, and Emerante de Pradines in the 1940s allowed Port-au-Prince department stores to stock a few local 78s along with their imported recordings, but none of these recordings were widely distributed in Haiti, and they can scarcely be considered to have constituted a local recording industry. With the advent of magnetic tape in the early 1950s, recording costs plummeted, and Haitian entrepreneurs began to produce a respectable number of 78 rpm recordings. The Ensemble aux Calebasses, under Nemours Jean-Baptiste, recorded its first commercial release around 1956. Most of the recordings in the 1950s and 1960s, in the early days of bandleader Nemours Jean-Baptistes konpa-dirèk, were done by Herby Widmaier at Radio d'Haiti, the new station of his father, Ricardo. Joe Anson, Haiti,s first record magnate, stocked the records in his shop on Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and they became the platform on which he built his Ibo Records label. After a falling out with Duvalier in the late 1950s, Anson moved to New York, giving the incipient music industry a transnational structure in its earliest years. next page click here to buy this book www.press.uchicago.edu