Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious
history with fieldwork and language documentation, A Transatlantic
History of Haitian Vodou analyzes Haitian Vodou's African origins,
transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in
contemporary Haiti. Split into two sections, the African chapters
focus on history, economics, and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and
Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting
tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of
the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of
enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and
cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits,
rituals, structure, and music of the region's religions sheds light
on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and
private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as
cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement.
At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, the
people of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda deeply shaped the emergence of
Haiti's creolized culture. The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou's
Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the
songs of Rasin Figuier's Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman's Guede,
legendary rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor's Miami
label, Mass Konpa Records. All the Vodou songs on the discs are
analyzed with a method dubbed "Vodou hermeneutics" that harnesses
history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and
ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou
songs.
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