RAM (band) - Musical Style

Musical Style

Richard Morse describes the band's musical style as "Vodou rock and roots". The mizik rasin movement began soon after the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1987. Under the regimes of Jean-Claude and his father, François Duvalier, the government appropriated for itself the authority of the Vodou religious traditions and made extensive use of religious leaders and traditions to assert its brutal authority and impose order over the population. When Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country, a widespread dechoukaj uprooted the most oppressive elements of the former regime and liberated the Vodou religion from its entanglements with the government. Unable to do so under the Duvaliers, musicians were eager to adopt traditional Vodou folk music rhythms, lyrics, and instrumentation into a new sound that incorporated elements of rock and roll and American pop music. This style of modern music reaching back to the roots of Vodou tradition came to be called mizik rasin in Kréyòl or musique racine in French.

The Hotel Oloffson was one of the early concert venues for rasin bands and performers beginning in 1987. Rasin bands incorporated not only traditional Vodou folk music lyrics and rhythms into modern musical style, but included petwo drums and rara horns, instruments used in Vodou religious ceremonies. When Morse gathered together dancers and musicians to create RAM in 1990, the rasin style was popular in Port-au-Prince and gaining popularity in the rest of the country. "Ke'm Pa Sote" by Boukman Eksperyans, whose song title translates to "I Am Not Afraid" in English, was the most popular song at the 1990 Carnival in Port-au-Prince. It was widely understood to be a criticism of the corrupt military government of General Prosper Avril. RAM adopted a similar format and together with Boukman Eksperyans and other rasin bands developed the style and genre of protest music grounded in Vodou musical tradition. Eventually, Richard Morse became so involved in the Vodou religion through his music that he was initiated as a houngan, or Vodou priest, in 2002. Describing a RAM concert, Morse explains, "Yes, you might see our dancers go into a trance. Some get possessed by the loas, to the rhythm of the drums, but it's a natural state when it happens. You can't fake it."

The musical style of RAM combines Vodou rhythms with rock and roll, but also includes influences from the blues, funk music, and occasional riffs from The Clash. Elements of other Haitian and Caribbean musical traditions, such as kompa, find their way into the music as well. The lyrics are a mixture of English, Kréyòl, and French, and many of the songs are narratives of the personal experiences of the band, or social commentary on current events in Haiti. "Boat People Blues" on the album Puritan Vodou, for example, offers a lament for the refugees who fled Haiti following the 1991 coup d'état. On the same album, "Ayizan", describes the final conversation between Morse and his friend, the artist Stevenson Magloire, the day before Magloire was stoned to death in the street by paramilitary attachés. The band's popularity in Haiti stems in part from this challenge to authority, known as "voye pwen" or "sending a point." As one Port-au-Prince resident has said of Morse and the band, "I love his music. He tells what's real, what's going on, like Bob Marley."