Retour a Haiti: Gérald Merceron + Le Groupe Haïti 2000 - Bokassa Grotraka (Bokassa Veut Manger Chisskar) [1981?]

What a fabulous cover photo, with Gerald on the "petit moto."  

This is the fourth instalment in Gerald's Haitian musical expedition (it's clearly marked as such on the cover), the others being his "Modern Jazz Compositions" (still to come, presumably from the early 70s), "L' energie mysterieuse," & "Tet san Ko" (both appeared before in these pages, of course).  With respect to the artists, with the familiar names of Lionel Benjamin, Herbie and Mushi and Joel Widmaier, this appears to be slacking slightly in inspiration compared especially to the 1978 'soundtrack' album which was so full of life soul and indeed energy.  And to this day I feel the best record overall is Mushi's 1982 Lakansyel where everything came together so perfectly.


The notes from the back, in addition to explaining the curiously odd title of the record, are so almost lysergically entertaining as to be impossible to resist translating and roughly transcribing here following.  They were wholly written by Gerald himself.

"I see you coming with your big shoes.  You will not hesitate to claim that the person here aimed at is the famed Bokassa, ex-emperor of Central Africa.  [Ed.- for sheer interest, read his jaw-dropping biography on wiki, which minimizes the cannibalistic aspects being referred to.]  Furthermore, some clever minds will swear, after listening to my song, that we are dealing with Giscard, not Chisskar, as the record sleeve so courageously proclaims.  Well, you are badly mistaken there!  I would never dare to attack his majesty Bokassa, saint man that even the Vatican has seriously considered canonizing, and even less so, an ex-president of the French Republic for whom I have the utmost respect.  The truth quite clear, here it is!
The word Bokassa -- it's easy to verify -- means, in Spanish, "big mouth".  As for Grotraka, it's an honest Japanese patronym that doesn't mean anything at all and definitely not "in big shit" [Gros tracas in French, presumably the haitian creole meaning -Ed.] despite appearances and despite all that which those same clever minds will perfidiously claim.  All of this is not obvious, but nonetheless, I beg you to believe it.  On the beard of Ayatollah Khomeini, light of our times, I swear that our Bokassa Grotraka is a Japanese student, of Spanish origin, who, in 1981, in Paris, savagely assassinated and greedily devoured 12 young Swedish coeds, all affiliated with the Party of Christian Masochists of Santiago in Chili, except the final girl, who moreover suffered from a peculiar anatomical problem once called virginity, actually described by Swedish scientists as a very rare congenital malformation, the reason for which the poor girl was eaten last, for dessert.  These acts of cannibalism, seemingly barbaric, were actually honestly motivated by political reasons.  Bokassa Grotraka wanted to protest (some months late) the exasperating neutrality of the Swedes against the awful affair of the persistent occupation of Afghanistan by a group of Indians from Arizona.  Left unpunished, via the intervention of his father, a diamond seller in Tokyo, the Japanese student then captured a respectable German businessman, Herr Chisskar, whose destiny seemed thence unavoidably and sadly sealed.  However Herr Chisskar, with his amazing teutonic energy, reinforced by a complete ignorance of the gastronomical tendencies of his attacker, refused to let himself be eaten... despite the diamonds magnanimously offered by the Japanese...  Now if you want to know the ending, please buy this record... but hurry: word on the street is, it will soon be banned...

Some information on this music:  "Sharp shooter" is a satirical song by Antoine Radule that was aimed at Paul Eugene Magloire...  "Raison de vivre" is a melody from Eumir Deodato, with French lyrics by Gerald, and an arrangement by Frantz Courtois who is also the guitar soloist.  All the other compositions are from Gerald Merceron.  He uses in the final part of the work a Haitian folk song called the "Atibonit-o" which was restructured harmonically.  The words for "Ma Nounoune" are by Antonio Rival.  "J'em Tonbe" and "Separation" are based on poems by Rudolph Muller.  All other words are from Gerald Merceron, who thanks all his helpers.


Pretty amazing blurb, right?  Awesome tongue in cheek writing.  You can't help but wonder if there was some psychoactive ingredient there.

The song in question, "Bokassa Grotraka:"




(Sung by Lionel Benjamin)
Note the lyrics: "Bokassa eats people, but Bokassa can't eat Idi Amin"...

Retour a Haiti: Gerald Merceron and Herby Widmaier are back with their magnificent and long-awaited Tet San Ko, 1980

We can never get enough from gorgeous, eloquent and mysterious Haiti-- that undiscovered country from whose beautiful bourn, of course, none wishes to return...   it's our fourth platterly trip back today (but never the last) with those wonderful Widmaiers and jazz keyboard genius Gerald Merceron and our collection still has holes.  I referred to this already in my treatise on music after hearing the shocking progressive composition of the title track.  Oddly enough it reappears purely as an instrumental in the b5 position here so the youtube upload has an elsewhere provenance.

This is a real mixed bag, not as consistent musically as the previous Energie Mysterieuse, with quite a variety of music, generic tropical uptempo pop-like songs (admittedly with odd chords) in the b1 position, chamber music with string quartets (a5 and b5), a vocal song purely accompanied by violin a la julverne, just like in the 1978 work, a few interesting electric piano ballads sung mostly by Lionel Benjamin this time, even an experimental, improvised instrumental like the middle part of King Crimson's Moonchild at b6, altogether, songwriting not quite as good even as son Mushy's Kote Ou masterpiece.

Here's one of the best songs, b3, with Gerald's trademark electric piano, the synth at the beginning reminding me a lot of Mo's first demo album:





Again the rainbow appears lyrically (lakansyel).

Some more notes of interest taken from the back:
The first track is advertised as a new Haitian dance, the "Shampa."
A new and fresh-faced Widmaier appears, Hansy, who plays bass on a few tracks.  I would love to know who is who on the back photo.  Our old favourite Mushi plays synths on the above sample b3.  Herby (or Herbie) only sings one song (a3).
Lyrics consist of poems set to music, by Frank Etienne, Antonio Rival, Pierre Richard Narcisse (what a great name!), Rudolph Muller, and Gerald himself (a2 and b1).  What a shame we can't understand the original writings as they must-- without a doubt--  be beautiful.
All compositions and arrangements of course are from the great Merceron.

The following quote appears at the bottom:

"prendre du passé rien que ce qui peut aider a pénétrer victorieusement dans l 'avenir. Tout le reste n'est que fatras"  --Leon Laleau.

"Take from the past nothing but what can aid to penetrate successfully the future.  All the rest is just noise (?)".

And of course, my plaintive and unrequited (usually) question which I asked for Karlos Steinblast and J.F. Murphy in the past-- where are they now?  today?

This was recorded in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Herby Widmaier and Gerald Merceron: On Music [no download]

Once again science gives us a non-explanation for the joy of music in the new scientist: the fact it's able to trigger the release of opioids in the brain, much as we have heard regarding exercise, sex, drugs, etc.  Is this a satisfying explanation to anyone?  Why is it that certain acoustic waves, in horrifically complex patterns as you can see from the wave breakdowns in Fourier analysis, can cause such delight in a receptive human mind?  We can accept the mathematical explanation, provided by the ancient Greeks-- in fact we are forced to, thus the octave is a 2:1 ratio, the fifth is a 3:2 ratio, etc., the inference being that in some way the brain finds the simplicity of it appealing, perhaps because it is easier for it to deconstruct or analyze, but moving beyond this to the allure of melodies becomes too complex for such a breakdown very quickly, in the same way that a Feynman analysis of the presumed quantum particle of graviton quickly leads to nonsensical infinities...  Evolutionary explanations abound: Darwin's explanation was that it was analogous to bird song and thus a mating performance which could have been sexually selected for, with the best song being selected by choosy mates, leading to a competition between individual efforts, etc.  It's like the evolution of language in a sense, it's a bit mysterious how it might have been initiated and in fact may forever remain inexplicable.  If those are its origins, how could that apply to humans when there is no sex difference for reception or creation?  The reasoning goes that it started in that unassuming way and then became embedded into culture as a social bonding tool.  (However, each time I hear about groupies or other girls adulating someone like Justin Bieber, this sexual selection model pops up in my head.)  And indeed I've mentioned frequently how music is definitely a very social art, it cannot exist without a listener, it serves in all human tribes to bond people together (despite the prevalence of solo listening models today like ipods and those huge hipster headphones), it is without a doubt a form of beautified communications between human beings like novels and poetry.  The aspect that seems most mysterious to me always is the intense connection with emotions that music has.  It's hard to deny there are some 'hardwired' ways in which we see such a connection, for example, minor intervals or chords appearing sad or at least, tiring to all humans, major intervals appearing optimistic or energizing.  The echoes of natural sounds are everywhere too in music, and clearly the recognition of such, like hearing tinkling notes on a piano evoking water, create a great deal of enjoyment for obvious reasons, due to the seeming purification of the white noise into distinct waveforms which we can process with resemblances from memory.  But where does the initial pleasure come from, neurologically?  To say that an octave or 2:1 ratio releases endorphins or excites opioid receptors in the brain is purely a tautology.  Why does the octave have that quality?  I think the answer must be a combination of all the above factors, the purification of white noise into individual personalized notes must have been an invention which self-perpetuated among the oldest human tribes and became selected for, whatever the reason might have been, and widespread due to its social adhesiveness.  From the primitive origins as evidenced by a typical pop song on the radio heard today with its insistent and retarded repetitiveness and anaesthetic 4/4 beat, it amazes me how far the complexity was taken when one listens to the most progressive compositions as evidenced here:





A very very hard to find album which I am now searching for, after hearing the title track with its astonishing chamber arrangement.  Stunning stuff, again, from Haiti.  If anyone knows of the existence of a copy of the full LP somewhere, please post a message.  (Btw apparently the expression, literally head without body, is an idiom for someone who eats a lot. )

Return to Haiti: 1978's L'Énergie Mystérieuse! - Une Révolution Dans La Musique Haïtienne Et Un Inoubliable Concert De Jazz

How many Widmaiers were there?  Mushi was the genius behind our magnificent Kote Ou? wherein he was accompanied by brother Joel on percussion and vocals, but here we have a Herbie (or Herby as it's spelled on other records) singing.  Well, it turns out this was the ultra-talented father, the original Brueghel as it were, and he was the preeminent Haitian musician of the day.  Remember that throughout these years the country endured a "reign of terror" under "Papa Doc" Duvalier controlled by the bizarrely named Tonton Macoutes who terrorized the population (executing about 50,000 people).  "Haitians named this force after the Haitian Creole mythological 'Uncle Gunnysack' bogeyman, who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunnysack (macoute) and carrying them off to be consumed at breakfast..."

But let's get to the good news of the music first, and the bad news later.  Note the stunningly original electric piano chords on track A4 by a certain Gerald Merceron.  His diatonic chord descending intro, with the polytonal figures, is bound to be sampled by some deejay somewhere, somehow, sometime very soon, I guarantee it...  Listen to it, it's pure hoppin' genius:




Obviously, the bizarre subsequent melody sung by Herbie is equally worthy of mention and memorable in the extreme.  It will take me days to digest what exactly he achieved in this utterly unique composition.

Track A6 (Benjamin - La Triste Découverte) brief as it is, features just a gorgeous minimalist sound; here we have the following team: on bass, Yves Lafontant, flute, Edgard Depestre, with son Mushi on electric piano, and on the violin, Fritz Benjamin.  The latter weaves complex and intricate arabesques throughout the rich fabric of chords created by the deep and soulful piano on high reverb.  What a sound!  This rivals anything we have heard from any German or UK prog record.




On track A8, Pou Lanmò Pa Guin Priz Sou Lavi (L'énergie Mystérieuse) we even have RIO in the style of Julverne, with modern, quasi-atonal composition behind a soprano 'melody' sung by one Nicole Saint Victor.  Wow!





Then the phenomenal and neverendingly blessed and blissful side A closes out with a relatively standard modal jazz tune with the angular saxes, diatonic major seventh chords, such as Chas. Mingus threw off by the dozens (not that there were many like him) in the seventies.  Note the Brazilian influence, previously occult, here outwardly evident.

Sadly, the second side with Lee Konitz features somewhat conventional, routine and pedantic jazz and is completely uninteresting to me.  Doesn't matter.  Side A was worth buying a thousand times over and again.  This the habitat for humanity that I would like to live in forever.

The back notes were written by Gerald Merceron, evidently also a luminary in the Haitian jazz scene, who mentions how he wished to preserve the work of Herbie Widmaier.  It seems truly tragic that as G. says, he was unconcerned with fame or prestige and left very little for posterity.  Btw Gerald's other record with Lee Konitz (from an unknown year) looks highly interesting, being called Modern Jazz Compositions from Haiti.

What about the bizarre black and white cover photo, presumably from the movie "Echec au silence" (i.e. defeat of silence)?  Here is the only information I could find.  In a small note at the start of this moving picture database that reveals that in the 28 years of the dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvaliers' years, only three films (!!) were produced in Haiti, mention is made of the first full length feature film shot: this work, from 1978, by Bob Lemoine, but it was never released...  Such is the human tragedy of tyranny.  Based on this cover I will hazard a guess that it was a surrealistic work along the lines of Luis Bunuel's wonderful art movies.  But how great would it be for someone to dig it out of the vaults and finally let it be seen by the rest of the world???

And as I said in the entry on Kote Ou, the suffering for those poor Haitians is never ending.  To this day, they live in utter poverty, and half of the aid promised by the rich countries after the devastating 2010 earthquake is still missing in action....  Of course, there are always more disasters that require more aid, cf. Syria currently, and the generosity of the West clearly has its limits...  Those who have read the magnificent work by Jared Diamond on Collapse will remember how 98 percent of the forest that used to cover the island has been removed (due to poverty: for firewood in general) and has led essentially to ecological collapse, with desertification, erosion and flooding proceeding relentlessly, and the point is obvious: humanity as a whole is performing the same rape and pillage on the entire earth.

So how can we not wonder at the joy and happiness Herbie Widmaier poured into his songs here despite the hunger, agony, and suffering that must have surrounded him??  Mysterious energy indeed...!

Mushi & Lakansyel's absolutely genius Koté Ou? from 1983, Haiti: another masterpiece!

This is a masterpiece of progressive Brazilian-style soft jazz that I never knew even existed until it came up for sale.  To find such gorgeous music and songwriting after such a long time looking for rarities as usual just stuns me.  It stands comparison to the best work of Milton Nascimento, the great Brazilian composer songwriter, with the added edge of progressive dissonance that takes it right over the top as far as I'm concerned.  Of course, having been released in Haiti, 1983, what chance was there for any commercial success?  Today of course, it is still regarded as a failed state, particularly since it was destroyed by the horrible 2010 earthquake and previous hurricanes and as usual not as much aid has been forthcoming as would seem to be necessary on moral grounds-- more and more powerful hurricanes being obviously one of the forecasts for the coming era of climate change.  But why is it such a failed state, the pre-eminent one in the Western hemisphere?  Why, indeed...

Well, few people are aware of the true story of why.  It turns out Haiti and the other Caribbean Islands were some of the first fully colonized spaces after Europe 'discovered' the Americas.  And the reason is obvious, they were islands and easy to dominate.  So of course their first thought was to turn them into huge farms, which we call plantations now, and who would work on these?  Well, the natives, initially.  But they were such slavemasters that they quickly ran out of manpower.  So the solution, obviously, was to import slaves from Africa.  For hundreds of years in fact, Africans worked those European farms to make sugar for Europeans.  And to make their owners rich.  Well, one day the whole country of slaves rose in revolt and said, no more, we will now control our country ourselves, get out, what you have been doing is plainly wrong.  The Westerners were forced to leave.  Instead, an island full of ex-slaves became a country.  Unfortunately, for punishment the 'civilized world' decided they would never help Haiti again, particularly, the United States, so close by, refused any aid, and moreover took delight in tampering with the politics of the country for its own selfish purposes.  And this situation continued-- for centuries.  What about the natives, why are there no natives (i.e, what are called American Indians) such as one sees commonly in Mexico and S. America?  They killed them all off, or rather, they all died.  You will not see any native people on Haiti anymore. What is different about this country is that the subjugation lasted so long.  For so many generations, there were only slaves and masters, unlike for ex. in Africa where the colonial era (setting aside the slave trade previous) lasted only one or two centuries.  As well, the island was fully depredated, there was nothing left, not even trees, to fall back on, unlike the case in North American where rich natural resources could be re-exploited upon independence.  So let's say it again, 'why is Haiti such a failed state, what's wrong with those people?'...   Imagine a man wrongly accused of murder, thrown into jail, who spends decades or even most of his life in solitary confinement.  One day the error is discovered, perhaps exonerated through DNA testing, the miscarriage of justice is reversed, and he is freed (such as is quite common in the United States).  Will this man become a productive member of our society now?  Of course not, moreover, it's quite possible he never will, he has been too severely traumatized-- he will never be the same again.


There is a lot of info on this page.  Apparently it was released to CD but these are now out of print as well.  A few points, notice that the lyrics are by Ralph Boncy (who is also exec. producer).  The 'other' artist, Lakansyel, sounds to me like pidgin French for rainbow, perhaps it's the name of the group?  Notice also that Widmaier's brother Joel is singing here, he is the one with the fabulous voice on the vocal tracks (half the tracks are instrumentals).  He also plays percussions, with Mushi playing keys.

At the bottom:  "This album is dedicated to Philippe and Chantal (his children?)."  Bonjour Soleil, Bonjour Misère:





And the last (title) track is shockingly progressive, showing what a talented composer this Mr. Mushi Widmaier was... tragically so, since this appears to be his sole output.





Check out how much the harmony vocals recall Milton Nascimento's classic use of the below-third interval, as opposed to rock's use of the above third or fourth started by the Beatles long ago.  As well note the amazing falsetto vibrato of the stunning vocalist who sustains the notes with almost no effort (presumably Joel).

And spare a thought for those poor people of Haiti, who have seen no end of suffering for 400 years or so, and still do not, thanks to the recent earthquake.  It is so important for us in the West to understand they are poor because they made us rich.  You cannot be wealthy without someone else being poor-- currency is a purely relational thing.
And wouldn't it be easy to get rich by using unpaid slaves to work a farm the size of an island-- for 300 years?

              ________________________


The more I listen to this the more it sounds like an old friend from childhood, something so familiar I feel like I 've listened to it all my life, like those summers at the beach spent in days long ago passed, or in Paul Verlaine's words, like voices you loved now silenced, with its tropical warmth and the sun and sadness shining down, with side a introducing us to a sunrise and a morning full of light and sound, with side b passing to afternoon and the final track with its bird calls closing with sunset over the ocean and streaks of color in the distance among the clouds...  This man surely put all his heart and soul into this work and asks us all to please, accept the gift of his soul with grace...