Songs of resistance in Haiti.

• Author: Dow, Mark
• Position: Singer songwriter Manno Charlemagne - Interview

Miami

The dirty words adults used when they argued, the songs in Catholic school, and the people hiding in his yard from the gunfire as President Paul Magloire was overthrown in 1956--all these form part of the texture of Manno Charlemagne's songs.

"I was raised by the priests, so you might hear that Gregorian thing when I'm singing. Since I was young, just sitting around in the neighbor-hood put me in some very subversive company. I would see guys making homemade bombs. They'd call me over and say, 'Hey, Manno, walk slow and give this to that guy over there.'"

Haitian singer/songwriter Manno Charlemagne is a hero in his country. For years, his songs have criticized Haiti's military regimes and their supporters, and encouraged active resistance. Charlemagne has also earned enemies in the Haitian diaspora for his willingness to criticize those he considers hypocrites or opportunists, no matter what their political affiliation. Though little known in the mainstream American music scene, Charlemagne performs regularly in Miami, New York, Boston, and Montreal--cities with large Haitian populations--and throughout the Caribbean and Europe. These days he is trying to reach out to an English-speaking audience.

Born in Port-au-Prince in 1948, Charlemagne spent his adolescence in the "popular" neighborhoods that would later vote overwhelmingly for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (the two men are personal friends) and that would also be so brutally repressed when Aristide was overthrown in September 1991. After that coup, Charlemagne was arrested, released, and arrested again. Eventually, he found refuge in the Argentine embassy in Port-au-Prince. He was able to leave Haiti with the help of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and a group of Hollywood notables, led by film director Jonathan Demme.

Charlemagne came to musical maturity in the kilti libete, or "freedom culture" groups of the 1970s. These groups, writes Wesleyan music professor Gage Averill, played noncommercially and drew from the troubadour tradition: "In many cases, the groups rewrote and radicalized peasant...