Thoughts on the aural landscape

For those with a passion for sound Port au Prince presents a pallete of sonic textures that are as diverse as they are challenging. With my dusty eyelids closed, the whispering hum of the overworked fan provides a foundation for a myriad of sounds pulsing further afield; low flying helicopters, the sweat shined hawks of street vendors, whistling brakes and incessant car horns accompany the familiar scales of emergency sirens, the fugle-horn bark of American petrol tankers and the universally pleasant  tones of children at play.  The heat is intense at eleven in the morning and serves to focus the sounds of this noisy capital in curious Technicolor.

Today we will deliver our final day of workshops building upon the trust we have earned over the last few sessions.  We seem to have found the balance now between fun, creativity and structure and it's working well despite my own personal crisis of confidence yesterday. Because of the diverse age range we have split the groups on this basis and have planned our workshops accordingly, creating a narrative, story based session for the little ones and a more challenging programme for the elders. There will be a sharing at the end of the day to a small audience which will I’m sure be followed by a bitter-sweet farewell party.

As a musician is truly a pleasure to come to a country where music (both secular and religious) is still deeply embedded within everyday culture and where a deep musicality is seen in everyone; be it our driver singing and dancing as he navigates the viscous flow of  traffic, the religious cacophony of the city on the sabbath or the multitude of  road side shops and Tap Taps (taxis) serving up a plethora of rhythms familiar or otherwise. People seem to only the slightest provocation to sing or dance and actually it makes me feel rather shy.

I have been keen to make it clear to everyone I meet that I am not here to teach music but to learn and to share it and it has been inspiring to see the fearlessness and joy in the Haitian approach to listening to and making music.  I would like to distill it, bottle it and serve up hefty measures to those in England who often say 'Me? Oh I'm not musical!'. What is it that we have lost that so many of these people still remember? 

I have never yet been anywhere on my travels where the culture of the people so closely resembles that Zimbabwean proverb 'If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing' and I am truly humbled by it. I look forward wholeheartedly to another two weeks of immersion in a culture whose passion is so familiar but whose sound craft is so very different to my own.