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Lapèsòn: poems, songs, and creole tales is arguably Syto Cavé’s poetic magnum opus, covering the entire scope of his inspirations: from politics to folklore, the Haitian social fabric, and love. Produced in 1994, the body of work alludes to sacred songs, traditional folktales, and dramatic techniques in modern Haitian theater. The tracks can be read and listened to both as individual texts and as a unified narrative. Some tracks follow directly one another, like linear chapters of a novel, some resonate with another after multiple tracks have ended. The writing style varies greatly: from conventional narrative techniques to surrealist and language poetry.
There are 6 eponymous tracks (Lapèsòn) on the album. The first Lapèsòn title tracks (track 1-2) are an instrumental, and a poem that introduces the story and theme. It is not until track 8 of the project that we hear the song most popularly associated with the title Lapèsòn:
Peyi a sonb, nanpwen limyè. Solèy kouche depi 4trè. Kote m prale, kote m rete? Nan tout lavil m ape chèche l. Lapèsòn, o! Babay, babay(X2) Men malè mwen pran koulè Yon vye chen sou lapli. Vwazinay ba l kout pye, li jape gwo lannwit. Lapèsòn, o! Babay, babay, babay(X2) Mwen desann sou Pòtay, M ateri Bisantnè, M ajenou bò lanmè, Mwen rele :"Agwe kote w?" Lapèsòn o! Babay, babay, babay(X2)
Lapèsòn means “so-and-so”, someone that we cannot or will not name. We hear a lost soul searching for someone that is gone. The words “So-and-so” play heavily into the unnamed nature of the subject, and behind the sadness, there is a slightly ironic tone in the goodbyes. This irony creates a suspension of our ability to confer a definite meaning to the sentiments that are expressed. That ambiguity allows transitions with the other tracks that are about lost worlds (notably a lost Haïti and a lost Haitianness), and the loss of freedom under political oppression. Most of the texts are written during exile or during the 1980s, the last years of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship; the temporality of the texts takes shape around this atmosphere of political hardship. Track 12 – our fourth Lapèsòn title – is heard like an additional stanza, modifying and completing track 8:
Papiyon nwa yo pran lari, Vil la andèy, pral gen lapli, Van ap soufle, lanmè move, gad jan bato mwen chavire. Lapèsòn o! Babay, babay, babay(X2). Moun yo pa menm, tan a chanje, Malè pandye sou tout do kay. Fanal timoun yo pran dife, Kè m ap rache, kè m ap fè m mal. Lapèsòn o! Babay, babay, babay(X2).
The political undertones are even stronger here, and it is difficult to imagine that Cavé did not realize this as he was writing the poem. Cavé explains in an interview that he wrote the poem for a woman who left New York to go to Brazil. As such, the song has been systematically interpreted as political. The “goodbyes” (babay) have been chanted during a number of important social movements in Haiti in the last fifteen years. The mechanisms that allow us to go from intimate to political are built inside the texts.
Peyi Pa m se Lannwit (track 5) starts with a very traditional piano jazz ballad, and with the same love story, but it turns into the quest for a friend who might understand the poet’s grief ; the piano then changes rhythm, with hard staccatos, a more martial mood, as the poet’s call for help ; then the song transforms – with no transition – into a hymn of thanks and gratefulness to the spirits, the loas and nature ; the poet then alternatively sings for Èzili the goddess of love, that he says he met on Haitian Flag Day (May18th), along with praises to Dessalines, the divinized founding father of the Haitian Independence. The poet then encourages an unnamed person (maybe a woman, or himself, or Èzuli/Dessalines…), telling him/her: “your head is full of flags/ and you’re dancing about/the way you grind [your hips] belongs to you/it’s not the government’s business.” If this was not Haïti and the Caribbean, one could be surprised to see resistance to the State associated with dancing. But this is Haïti, and singing and dancing can be at the same time hedonistic or intimate expression of self and collective resistance. Different musical atmospheres and different discourses and themes merge into each other, until we feel it absolutely natural that Haïti, the elusive lover, Dessalines and Erzulie can all be sung at the same time.
The relationship with music shapes both the text itself and the process of it taking root in the cultural imagination. Its success and its meaning cannot be separated from the fact that the text is lived, known, and memorized as melody. In an interview, Cavé, and Valcourt who composed the melody explain in detail its origin story:
– Syto: The song is a love story. I was living with a woman back then, and she was leaving for Brazil. When she left I composed the song. I felt a great absence, a great hole, a void. This is why the song has a Brazilian feel to it.
– Boulo Valcourt: Syto and I are always composing music together. Most of the time he writes the lyrics for me. But this time, he came with a song and asked me for chords. So I had to find a way to give it color because it was too flat. When he came with it [hums a melody], [plays it flatly], [plays it with more ornamentation]. So I gave it shape. That’s what the song needed. Syto came up with something very beautiful, but it lacked the shape that I put.
– Syto: The song became larger than what it was. It became a song-woman, a song-city, a song-country. […] It took on a strong political meaning. So much so that, just before the Duvalier dictatorship ended, we were playing it at the Batofou bar – and you know the regime was fragile at that time – so people thought we were saying goodbye to the regime that was crumbling. Certainly, all of that might be in the song. But I’m telling you where it came from, at first it was a love story, the story of a break-up, and everything turned upside down. It started one way, and then it took its own path.
– Boulo: […] Syto was really describing reality. He made people understand, “The country is dark, there is no light. Goodbye” and all that. You could not say such things outright, and Syto made it slip through. Whether it was people in the government or the opposition, everybody had to accept the song. Inside of them, there was that knowledge of what the song was saying.
The only thing that is clear is the dynamic and collaborative nature of the process. The true song is the one that is listened to, in the moment. The final product takes shape and can embrace many meanings, leaving the public to decide where they will go. Lapèsòn cannot exist if it is not also sung and played, interpreted by the author, the listener, and so-and-so.
At its core, Lapèsòn is a tale of love, friendship, and of spirits, human and divine spirits, colorful spirits, raging with emotions. It is also the tale of dying worlds, surviving worlds, and eternal worlds. These tales are in the text, in the music, in Cavé’s voice, and in the stories behind the work of art. The album is more than its origin story, and more even than its rich reception story and memorized collective reinterpretation. There are more stories, more people, and voices in powerful narratives than what can be efficiently used by a public at a moment in time. Nevertheless, at the center of Lapèsòn, there is an unnamed woman, while so many things are named— streets, people, gods, a whole island, and its history—one thing remains unsaid. No music without silence.
