Ethnographic Transcription and Music Ideology in Haiti

The Music of Werner A. Jaegerhuber

Bibliographic Data

ID3979929
AuthorsMichael Largey (corresponding author), Michael D Largey
Year2004
Volume25
Issue1
Pages1-31
Publication date2004-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Music Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-0350 • E-ISSN: 1536-0199
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lat.2004.0005
OpenAlexW1496408669
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

In his study of Haitian political history, Michel-Rolph Trouillot observes that the Haitian peasantry is not isolated in Haiti's mountainous countryside, but has maintained an active and vital presence in the country's urban centers. Trouillot suggests that the "physical to-and-fro of the peasantry from the hinterland to the urban trenches means that it has come to occupy part of the urban social and cultural terrain" (1990, 114). Trouillot claims that: while the economic and political divisions [between elites and peasants] may be reminiscent of trench warfare, the cultural relations between the classes are more reminiscent of a guerrilla war. The peasantry is not master of this space—or never for long—but it penetrates it deeply and harasses the enemy, while remaining ready to retreat at any point. It does not dictate the dominant cultural codes, but those who impose them must take its values into account. For example, there is no aspect of Haitian economic and political life that explains why the Jaegerhubers, a commercial family of German origin firmly ensconced within the bourgeoisie, should have invested a considerable amount of time at the beginning of this century in transcribing peasant songs. (ibid.) In this article, I argue that Haitian art music provides a fruitful locus for investigating the political and economic relationships between Haiti's rural peasant majority and its urban elite minority. In the period after the U.S. occupation of Haiti, Haitian artists, ethnographers and politicians saw Haitian cultural life in general, and art music in particular, as a deeply politicized space in which economic and social issues could be debated. I suggest that Haitian composer and amateur ethnographer Werner Anton Jaegerhuber's (1900-53) interest in the songs of the Haitian peasantry was part of a larger debate about the utility of peasant culture to the Haitian nation. Through his transformations of Haitian peasant songs from [End Page 1] ethnographic transcription to arrangements for voice and piano and finally to choral pieces in a "vodouesque" style, Jaegerhuber helped to realize Jean Price-Mars's dream of making the products of the Vodou ceremony a cultural commodity that could be shared with an international audience. Jaegerhuber viewed such transformations as socially progressive because they recognize the artistic production of the Haitian peasantry as having value—or "cultural capital" in the words of Pierre Bourdieu (1984). By transforming the rough hewn music of the Haitian rural underclass into a product suitable for the piano parlor, Jaegerhuber sought connections with the peasantry that would transform not only the peasants' social and economic relationships with Haitian elite classes, but also Haiti's political relationships with foreign powers, especially the United States. As a cultural worker on the forefront of the burgeoning tourism industry in the 1940s, Jaegerhuber found an outlet for his compositions that could demonstrate the value of Haitian peasant culture to Haitian audiences and would pique the interest of foreign tourists during their brief visits to the "pearl of the Antilles." Yet, Jaegerhuber's experience reflects some of the limits facing cultural workers as they attempted to share their materials with a wider audience. In his own way, Jaegerhuber challenged the tendency of foreign observers to cast Haitian traditional religion as a dangerous and destructive force; his sympathetic use of melodies and rhythms from Haitian traditional music was in sharp contrast to foreign commercial depictions of Haitian music that presented Vodou as evil. At the same time, Jaegerhuber's attempts to distance himself from the sensationalist accounts of Vodou music in foreign media went to the opposite extreme. His efforts to universalize Haitian traditional music, to trace its origins not only to the songs and dances of West and Central Africa, but also to the Gregorian chants of the early Christian church in Europe and the songs of ancient Greece, downplayed the importance of African religious and linguistic influences on Haitian music

Archaeology · Art · Bourgeoisie · Elite · Ethnography · Ideology · Literature · Musical · Peasant · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Diverse Musicological Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Music History and Culture

Tools

Open DOI