Twelve bands to perform on three stages at GlobalFest concert

Published: Tuesday, January 04, 2011, 8:01 AM     Updated: Tuesday, January 04, 2011, 1:49 PM

By Marty Lipp/For the Star-Ledger

Richard Morse says a great rock concert makes him feel like he is time-traveling to the early 20th century, when the roots of the music began to develop. But when his band RAM plays in the countryside of Haiti, he says, he feels like he has gone back to the Garden of Eden.

One of the performers at this year’s GlobalFest concert, taking place Sunday at Webster Hall in New York, RAM will demonstrate to listeners that though Haiti is one of the poorest and most devastated countries on Earth, it has a rich musical heritage to offer.

GlobalFest is a showcase that occurs each year during the gathering in New York of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, an organization of programmers at North American arts venues. GlobalFest brings together 13 world-music performers playing shortened sets on three stages, with hopes that the performers can spark enough interest to put together a North American tour. Formerly mounted as a collaboration between several organizations, GlobalFest this year begins life as an independent nonprofit group.

“We are thrilled to be having RAM,” says West Orange resident Isabel Soffer, one of the GlobalFest co-producers. Soffer notes that GlobalFest was particularly interested in presenting a Haitian group, since the country has been hit with hard times and that Haitian music has not had the exposure it deserves in North America.

RAM is one of several strongly traditional groups on this year’s diverse GlobalFest bill. Soffer says it was not a conscious decision, but “We hope to revitalize traditional music on the touring market.”

Morse, 53, the founder of RAM (the letters represent the initials of his full name, Richard Auguste Morse), was raised in Connecticut. His mother, Emerante de Pradine, was a well-known Haitian singer; his American father taught Latin American history at Yale. In the mid-1980s, he left New York, where he was performing rock with something of a Caribbean accent, and relocated to Haiti.

He began to manage the storied Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince, which became a center of an emerging local music scene, and put together a band. Along with a handful of other groups playing what became known as mizik rasin, RAM based its music on sounds from voodoo, a Haitian religion that descended from African beliefs and is commonly misunderstood because of simplistic depictions in the media.

RAM has gotten involved in Haiti’s politics, which has made its path not just difficult but dangerous. “We’ve survived death threats,” says Morse, who once was carried away in the middle of a performance for singing the band’s song “Fey,” which became an anthem during the military regime in the early 1990s for those in support of ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The band’s albums have not been widely available outside Haiti, but it has played its regular Thursday night gig at the Hotel Oloffson for years. Morse says the band has matured as the roster has changed, over the years. The fledgling band he started in 1990, he says, “was not as hot as it is now.”

Over the years, Morse’s perspective on the band, the country and the world has changed. Instead of wanting to achieve international pop success, he became primarily interested in playing music that would entertain and spiritually resonate for Haitians.

He even has been ordained as a voodoo priest, and he and his bandmates have become teachers of Haitian culture, as well as students.

“I’m just a lucky dude,” he says.

GlobalFest

Where: Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St., New York

When: Sunday at 7 p.m.

How much: $40; call (212) 545-7536 or visit visit ticketmaster.com.

Here are some of the other performers scheduled for GlobalFest:

• Born in Cuba and now living in Jersey City, Pedrito Martinez is an award-winning percussionist who has played with an incredible array of stars — from Bruce Springsteen to Paquito D’Rivera. He is now striking out on his own with a small, nimble combo, though it has not released an album yet. The Pedrito Martinez Group brings together jazz and rootsy Afro-Cuban sounds that also incorporate shades of funk.

• The Colombian band La-33, named for the street where the musicians met in Bogota, is known for peppering its salsa with innovative arrangements and a bit of humor: Its “Pantera Mambo” is based on the theme from “The Pink Panther” and the Police hit “Roxanne.” Though the band members are young and have tastes that include rock, jazz and reggae, their sound is reminiscent of the “hard salsa” that is associated with the classic ’70s Latin bands.

• Orquestra Contemporânea de Olinda represents a new chapter in the exploration of the traditional music of Brazil’s northeastern states, which is often overlooked even by other Brazilians. The large band melds a bit of rock instrumentation with old-style fiddle, brass and percussion from the carnival traditions of the state of Pernambuco. The band can play the speedy rhythms of frevo or change things up with simmering Afrobeat or its ska version of the James Bond theme.

• Guitarist Diblo Dibala began playing with top bands in Kinshasa as a teenager in the Congolese style called soukous. He formed the band Loketo in the 1980s, when soukous evolved into a much faster style that became popular in Western Africa and Paris. Dibala is known for a fleet-fingered style that sparkles over hip-swiveling rhythms that sound like a cousin to Dominican merengue (in fact, Dibala guested on Latin star Juan Luis Guerra’s classic album “Fogaraté”).

• Other performers will include Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal, the Creole Choir of Cuba, Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole, Novalima, Red Baraat, Rhythm of Rajasthan, Yoro Ndiaye and Zikrayat.
— Marty Lipp