Heartbeats of Vodou

Natural History, Dec, 1998 by James Ridgeway, Jean Jean-Pierre

Haitian drums call from Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn.

For Frisner Augustin--known to all simply as Frisner--drumming is a livelihood, an art, and a religion. "I play from my soul," he says. "I play from my roots." Born in Haiti in 1948, Frisner grew up in a dirt-poor section on the south side of Port-au-Prince, close to the city's big cemetery. There, amid the graves, stands an imposing, dark stone cross. For many who frequent the burial grounds, this is not just a Christian symbol. It also represents Baron Samedi, keeper of the cemetery and commander of the Gede, the family of Vodou spirits associated with the cycle of life and death.

As a child, while his mother worked, Frisner was often cared for by his grandmother, who had a deep faith in Vodou. At night he would sneak out to ceremonies to watch his uncle play the drums. First Frisner began to play the ogan (a simple metal instrument of varied form, struck like a bell), then the drums. He showed a natural talent and was soon playing the big maman (mother) drum. He was so small that it looked as though it might topple over on him.

Frisner's father wanted him to learn welding, and for a while he worked long hours for $1.50 a week--not even enough to help his mother buy food. But he gained a reputation as a drummer and was soon sought out by folklore troupes and Latin bands in Haiti. In 1972 he came to New York City, where one of his bands had landed a job. To survive in "the Big Apple," he worked as a carpenter, tried to start a small moving company, and drove a taxi. Eventually he was able to earn a living from his music--teaching drumming classes at Hunter College and giving private lessons, playing at Vodou ceremonies and folk performances, and occasionally recording. Now he even gets lucrative gigs when mainstream artists want a Vodou sound--for example, on the sound track to the Jonathan Demme film Beloved, based on the Toni Morrison novel.

Frisner sees himself as more than simply a teacher and performer. He is a kind of cultural and religious ambassador, introducing the beliefs and rituals--and the underlying spirit--of Vodou to his audiences and students, who are both Haitian and non-Haitian, black and white. Longtime friend Lois Wilcken, a white woman who first met Frisner in 1981, recalls that during her first drumming lesson with him, he pointed to the images of Vodou spirits lining the walls of his room. "When you play the Vodou drum," Frisner told her, "relax and let these people help you." He charged her only ten dollars for a three-hour lesson. "I don't see the money," he says. "I see the people. I teach everybody, and I play for everybody. My dream is to let people know that the drum is their heart."

Particularly in the United States, Frisner realizes, Vodou is feared and misunderstood. "They are always talking about how Vodou is killing people. I am going to really fight to make them know Vodou is not this." Contemporary Haitian Vodou is much less concerned with death than with life--life as it has been lived by Haitians for four hundred years and is lived today by millions of Haitians and Haitian emigrants around the world. It is a religion that honors ancestors--both the blood ancestors of the individuals who practice it and the shared ancestry of a people brought in slavery from Africa.

In Haiti, where survival has often depended upon family and community support systems, Vodou is family oriented, community based, and ultimately charitable. The basic rituals of Vodou are ceremonies during which the many spirits are fed offerings; afterward the food is shared with the hungry. Still, Vodou does have a sinister side: black magic, rites designed to bring good to oneself and harm to one's enemies. Traditional Vodou priests reject black magic, believing it entails making a pact with the devil or with evil spirits, which in time will drag down and destroy the practitioner.

No one gave Vodou a worse reputation than the Haitian "President for Life" Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, who used black magic as a political tool. Soon after he assumed power in the late 1950s, Duvalier appointed a Vodou priest as head of a nationwide militia force. He fostered the fear that he himself was a potent commander of the spirits, and his paramilitary goons, the Tonton Macoutes, were tied in fact and myth to sorcerers. Wild stories circulated about how Papa Doc would bury people alive or have the head of an enemy cut off, packed in ice, and flown to the palace, where he would sit in a room and commune with it for hours.

Although he now lives in New York, Frisner often visits Haiti, where he is afforded the regard due someone who has managed to make it in the United States without abandoning his traditions. While in Port-au-Prince, the drummer seldom leaves his old neighborhood, a narrow side street near the cemetery. The father of five children from several relationships, he stays in a small house he bought for his son Gary, seeing friends and relatives and bouncing his granddaughter, Candy Love, on his knee. Someday, in memory of his mother, he hopes to build a cultural and community center here, where kids can learn drumming. Across the street, his cousin Mimose, herself a manbo (Vodou priestess), runs a tiny outdoor shop, the center of all activity on this block. She sells a little bit of everything--soap, packets of salt and sugar, and other household necessities.