Album cover of Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings).

Rara season starts along with Carnival, and keeps going through Lent, culminating on Easter Week. It is a paradoxical mix of both carnival and religion. Rara societies form musical parading bands that walk for miles through local territory, attracting fans with old and new songs. Bands stop at solemn spots—cemeteries, for example, where they salute the ancestors. Musicians play drums, sing, and sound bamboo horns and tin trumpets. These horns—vaksin—create the distinctive sound of the Rara. Each player plays one note, in a technique called hocketing, and together the band comes up with a melody. Then, a chorus of queens and fans sing and dance along to the music. The sound carries for miles around letting fans know that the Rara parade is coming.

This is an old festival, harkening back to slavery times in Haiti and, before that, in Western and Central Africa. Its songs and melodies have been passed down for generations, so they are all popular “hit” songs. The town of Leogane is best known for its Rara, but the festival is practiced all over Haiti and is different from region to region. Moreover, Rara is played enthusiastically in the summertime in cities in North America: Miami, New York, Boston, Montreal. “Rara makes me feel I am in my real skin,” said one Haitian in New York. For Haitians in the diaspora, playing or dancing in a Rara delivers the special ambiance of Haiti. It is a taste of home.