Although the joyful music of a Haitian
rara procession might seem spontaneous, a considerable amount of rehearsal is actually necessary, as the musicians showed me as they rehearsed in an outdoor courtyard behind a house in their neighborhood.
Rara bands consist of a number of drums, some from the western tradition, like snares and tenors, as well as bongos,scrapers, cymbals and Haitian kongo drums, as well as the large bamboo trumpets called
vaksen (now often made out of plumbers’ pipe) and valveless tin horns, often fashioned out of old coffee cans. The latter instruments require the most rehearsal, since each horn is fashioned to play only in one key, and, having no valves, can only play one set of open notes or partials. This means that it takes a group of men working together each with one horn to play a melody, much like handbell ringers in a church. The melodies of
rara music have words in
Kreyol, and they are sung before they are played. A musician with an electric keyboard will often play the melody first on the board to help the tin horn players get it in their heads, and then they practice it until they have the note sequences and rhythms down. I was also thrilled to see small children pick up one of the drums and play the rhythms with a great deal of familiarity and accuracy. I was told that these children were sons of some of the musicians in the group, and so are growing up around the culture of
rara music.
Related
