THE HAITI BOX: WELCOME TO OUR BLOG

Folklorist Alan Lomax worked in Haiti from December of 1936 until April of 1937, documenting music and ritual at the behest of his colleague and friend, Zora Neale Hurston, and under the auspices of the Library Of Congress. He arrived just two years after the brutal 19-year occupation by the US Marines, when resentment against Americans ran high. In spite of this. Haiti opened its arms to a number of talented and highly distinguished US artists and anthropologists, who were drawn by the island's distinctive culture, its striking musical and visual arts, and its people--as well as its fascination (though mostly sensationalist) accounts of Vodou, a Haitian amalgam of religious beliefs and practices derived from West Africa. While there, Lomax recorded fifty hours of music, made copious notes, diagrams, and drawings, and even shot some color film. These have never before seen the light of day.

Harte Recordings, together with the Alan Lomax Estate and with the collaboration of the Library Of Congress and the Association for Cultural Equity, will be releasing a box set in the Fall chronicling Alan's journey into Haiti. This massive project will include 10 CDs of music, Alan's trip journals, a reproduced map that Alan personally annotated, a book of liner notes and essays and the film footage he shot.

When the project is completed, the Association for Cultural Equity will return a full set of digitally restored, pre-mastered and catalogued recordings to the Haitian people as part of its Caribbean Repatriation Program.

This blog will chronicle the putting together of the box set, the state-of-the-art technology used in mastering the album, period photos and ephemera, premiers of the actual music--never before heard--and previews from the album notes and articles, as well as discoveries made by the Producers while researching all that is HAITI.

ENJOY!!!!