La melodie vaudoo--voodoo art songs: the genesis of a nationalist music in the Republic of Haiti.

In 1945, the Haitian composer Werner Jaegerhuber (1900-1953) published a set of six art songs entitled Complaintes Haitiennes that is without precedent in the literature of art song. They achieve their unique status by virtue of the fact that their texts and musical material are derived entirely from the rituals of Haitian voodoo. Even within the confines of the art music produced by Haitian composers, Jaegerhuber's songs constitute a departure from a musical tradition that typically fused the popular Creole rhythms and melodies of the urban elites with the imported forms and standards of European art music. Jaegerhuber's originality rests in the manner in which his art is founded upon the largely neglected musical traditions of the rural majority of his nation, combined with his own European conservatory training. Based on a period of ethnographic research beginning in 1937 and spanning eight years (Jaegerhuber 1937-45), these songs constitute a conscious and deliberate attempt to establish a music possessing a distinctively national character founded on an indigenous source. (1)

Two factors recommended these songs as more central to the genesis of a nationalist music than the many other compositions of this composer. First, of all of Jaegerhuber's compositions that incorporate ethnographic material, the Complaintes Haitiennes retain the closest possible link, through their text and melody, to the original sources. Second, of all of Jaegerhuber's compositions, these were his only published works. The appearance of the second edition of the songs in 1950--with its garland of three adulatory essays, alternate English translations, and descriptions of the voodoo deities that are the subject of these songs--possesses the character of a manifesto. In addition, it attests to the intention of the editor to address a public beyond those residing in Haiti. This new edition of the songs would make it possible for a broader audience to encounter them. For these reasons, the Complaintes Haitiennes constitutes a public declaration of the birth of a new school.

This article will support the assertion that Jaegerhuber founded a distinct national school by investigating the cultural and political life of the Republic at the dawn of the twentieth century. It will then examine Jaegerhuber's composition of Complaintes Haitiennes in light of his own development as a composer, as well as their reception by the elite classes of Haiti. An examination of Jaegerhuber's own unpublished ethnographic research will lay the necessary foundation for a study of the compositional process of transforming the liturgical music of voodoo into art songs. A brief summary of the influence exerted by Jaegerhuber upon the next generation of Haitian composers will conclude this article.

Jaegerhuber's contribution to Haiti's musical culture may be best appreciated in the light of a substantial, 43-page essay published in Port-au-Prince in 1919 by Dr. Franck Lassegue (1892-1940), entitled "Etudes critiques sur la musiques haitienne" (A Critical Study on Haitian Music). (2) Lassegue surveys the state of Haiti's musical culture by presenting a general overview followed by a critique of four contemporary composers: Ludovic Lamothe (1882-1953), Justin Elie (1883-1931), Alain Clerie (1876-1941), and Nicolas Geffrard (1871-1930). The general theme of this essay is a search for a distinctly Haitian "voice" among, what the author contends to be, the "domination" of European musical models. For example, in speaking of Nicolas Geffrard, the composer of Haiti's national anthem, La Dessalinienne, Lassegue (1919, 41) makes the following observation:

 
   As he has constantly absorbed Mendelssohn and grown strong thereby, 
   I have found in la Dessalinienne a bit of this warm and enthusiastic 
   music which we occasionally encounter in the author of the A 
   Midsummer Night's Dream. However, Mr. Geffrard told me that he found 
   his inspiration in a score by Schumann to ground his laconic drama 
   where one hears moaning those cries of revolt of an undefined 
   nostalgia. And to this I attach the patriotic sobs of Chopin in the 
   Military Polonaise. (41) 

What is evident in this citation is the indebtedness of this Haitian composer to the canon of European composers (i.e., Mendelssohn, Schumann, perhaps Chopin) whom he admires and emulates in his composition. Lassegue's essay seeks to promote a more distinctly Haitian music--essentiallement haitienne. He lists two criteria to achieve this: "(1) that where, in spite of the dominance of the exotic, one can still recognize a bit of the sentiments associated with our homes or of our artists; (2) that where one clearly sees the genius of Haiti liberated from the competent frame of the quintessential capacities of our artists" (7).

The terms that Lassegue employs are broad. In his first criterion, he maintains that one can recognize a specific "Haitianness" in a composition by the sentiments that it evokes of Haitians' daily lives--nos milieux--or that are associated with their artists. In addition, this quality should be apparent in spite of the current dominance--l'ascendance--of the exotic. What is exotic, according to Lassegue, are all the non-Haitian elements. He devotes a section of his essay to this issue, entitled "La musique haitienne et la Culture des auteurs etrangers" (Haitian Music and the Culture of Foreign Authors). Here, the European parentage of much of Haiti's elite musical culture is noted. He criticizes the artists of his generation for not being the owners of their own music. In his words: "In spite of the sentiments they have slipped in there and which in part belongs to them, there is nothing else that could ascribe to them their right to ownership" (3).