The Brooklyn Rail

Somewhere in Haiti, at night, a crowd has gathered within a circular wood and tin structure to either watch or participate in a ceremony. Dressed in a mix of yellow and colorful patterns, groups of women dance facing each other, changing the direction of their movement every two beats, and then turn in complete circles, to face each other again. After two complete circles, the dancers change partners. A samba, the MC sings to “Legba / at / the gate.”

Therein lies the plateau of Haitian culture, ritual music that is “communally orgasmic,” in the words of painter Rose-Marie Desruisseau; the most thrilling experience in Haitian life, replicated, or at least attempted, again and again by dance bands.

“There are some days we scream / long live life / it’s that beautiful,” for example, in a soft jazz song by Reginald Policard, “What are We,” are some of the best lyrics on joy. He writes in one of his metaphysical poems, “Fanm Lan Bel,” about “a woman as beautiful as / a butterfly crucified by the moon in a spiderweb,” a perspective on beauty we dance to through “from my hidden heart / to your eyes in love” or “from my feet on fire / to your body that I love,” in “I Need You,” both song and poem as part of the spiral of life. A spiral that also includes death and reincarnation. “If you walk down one of these nights / to the warmer side of any cemetery / you’ll see him standing on a piece of moon,” in “Pidombre,” takes us on a slow waltz with the dead.

The most popular dance bands he has written for are Ibo Combo, Caribbean Sextet, and the Alan Cavé band. Caribbean Sextet is a Haitian jazz fusion band, at the heights of Caribbean basin music. Syto Cavé wrote Caribbean Sextet’s big hit “La Peson’n,” a song that is danced to as if smiling while riding on a ferris wheel or fiddling with a glass butterfly. “The sun’s been set since 4pm / where am I going / where do I live / throughout these streets I look for you.”

Syto Cavé was born in Haiti in 1944. He blossomed as a poet first in the radical Port au Prince of the 1960s, and later in New York City as part of the Kouidor theater group, becoming an actor and a playwright—with a fan in writer Aimé Césaire—often putting on plays in Martinique. His plays are masterpieces, including Brakoupe, about a man struggling with a severed arm, a play with butoh-like qualities.

Cavé began writing songs for his plays, which are existential and center individuals, their beauty, their joy, their bitterness, and his characters’ impacts on Haitian society. In Met Katye we meet a neighborhood activist, who is presented as the personification of courage, and the true keeper of peace, the flame in a community. In Kavalye Polka, two friends attempt to harmonize their painful memories and live in common.

Thus, Syto Cavé writes like a figurative painter, as did many songwriters of his generation in the Nueva Trova movement, or in psychedelic rock of the era. “She hides in an attic concealed on a shelf / behind volumes of literature based on herself” from “Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine” by Country Joe and the Fish comes to mind.

“Stephanie…like a star at the end of night / like a bird in the rain / like a song of despair / I come back to your feet” in “Stephanie” by Reginald Policard, is a crowd favorite in Haiti. Like Yoko in “Oh Yoko!” it’s the figure of a woman whose singular presence has marked an era.

Haiti is a Taino indigenous compound word, from ayi meaning land, and ti meaning mountains, though some argue that ti means great spirit. There is a utopia within Haiti that can be called Ayiana, meaning land (ayi) of flowers (ana), of blossoms as people, to which music, especially vodou music, attempts to lead Haitians. Vodou lyrics like “Carmelite, carmelite, I’m in love you. I’m in with love you, carmelite, enough to marry you” or “they’ve turned Vodou / into their fathers’ horse, O,” help the descendants of slavery, through plantation perversity, blossom into courageous lovers and friends, respectful of each other’s presences. Cavé’s songs do the same.

In Haitian culture, Cavé is the only lyricist to have brought avant-garde literary devices to dance music. Furthermore, these songs continue to be massive radio hits, an anomaly in a country where those generally have very simple, melodramatic lyrics, with soap opera plots. These days, only songs by Orchestre Tropicana D’Haiti, such as “Zanmi a Moi,” “Oka Loka,” or “Je Te Desire,” or Tabou Combo’s “Aux Antilles”—“please don’t cry / there’s no need to place your hands on your head / if I leave / I’ll come back”—can compare. Unlike Cave’s songs, Orchestre Tropicana and Tabou Combo feature lyrics that are similar to classical Haitian poetry, particularly Oswald Durand.

“As island is most often a song,” Syto Cavé writes in his book Van Cortland Club, and perhaps his songs make up one long story of the island. In Haitian culture’s abstract ideals, the most beautiful music is played underwater, where the deity resides, and princesses live with heroes who’ve long passed in castles made of sand. Broken into a thousand pieces, Ayiana waits for renewal of its culture, instead of the copies of global pop that are often promoted as art. In short, Haiti waits for a new Syto Cavé, now eighty and no longer writing for dance music, while guided by his lyrics.