Welcome to Makandal

Sometimes the line between the lurid and the divine is not so apparent. So I didn’t know how to react when Frisner told me we were doing a “voodoo” midnight show at a West Indian ballroom in Flatbush, that the presenter wanted something sensational, and that he, Frisner, was eager to take the gig. Makandal, named after one of Haiti’s most feared revolutionaries—an infamous magician who triumphed over death at the stake—had first made its mark in New York with such specialties as eating broken glass and dancing with fire. But by the late summer of 1990 most of the dancers who arrived with Makandal in 1981 had left the group, and we hadn’t replaced them with magicians. We cultivated a more polished image now. Or did we? Continue reading →

We weren’t the kind of people who stressed over holiday gifts. Frisner had come up out of a struggling community—he literally slept on a dirt floor as a child. I had developed an aversion to the annual shopping mania, and, as a graduate student, my means were limited anyway. As we approached the finish line for 1987, I counted five years almost to the day with the maestro, and we celebrated only joudlan (New Year’s Day, also Haiti’s Independence Day). We did it the traditional Haitian way, with a ben chans (herbal luck bath) on New Year’s Eve and a nice, steaming kettle of soup joumou (squash soup) in the morning. So it surprised me, and touched the bottom of my soul, when Frisner presented me with a holiday gift, the very best he had to offer: his music. Continue reading →

How did it all start? With a wish, a worry, a dream, maybe a phrase of music? Yes, yes, yes, yes…

An interview I set up more than thirty years ago gets it in a nutshell. I say “set up” because I made the appointment, I told Frisner what the gist of it would be—his life in Haiti before coming to New York nearly ten years ago—and I brought a set of questions; but he really conducted the interview. After the first question, he took over, having spent the last few days reflecting on what he wanted the world to know about his struggle to become a drummer. I took the 3 subway to East 96th Street in East Flatbush on the evening of March 24, 1982, descended the tumbledown stairway to his basement digs, sat down with him, turned on the cassette tape recorder, and posed the first question. Hours later, I knew I was going home with a gem. But then, while I was away in Haiti during the summer of 1984, the cassette vanished!
Continue reading →