f34 W
hen I was an undergrad- uate, for me Haiti meant the dangerous romance of the Oloffson hotel. The Caribbean island was
the sum of those fantastical tales and Greene’s writing combined with a sense of hopelessness in the face of overpowering nature (from news reports) and a fear of the supernatural (from terrible films). It inspired me to take a module called ‘Afro Caribbean Religious Cults’, thinking that getting a bit of Voodoo practice under my belt might deal with that fear and gener- ally come in handy.
However, being solely academic the study lacked any practical element. So whilst it dispelled the silly romance, the fear and ‘exotic myths’ – going some way to explaining the success of Catholicism on the island (with its pantheon of saints, angels and more virgins than is ever likely, these were easily assimilated into Voodoo ideas of the spiritual world) – I was not otherwise empowered.
As I go to meet Benjamin and the drummer in her band, Bertrand Noel, I wonder if she, as a bonafide priestess, might help rectify this matter. Arriving at the appointed spot outside Chiswick Park tube station with my French-speaking friend, Jackie, who’s kindly pitched up to provide the translation, we can’t see any- one who fits the bill. We’re about to give up when Jackie says, “Hang on, this might be them.”
Walking up the slope from the High Street towards us is a man in jeans and a leather jacket, coolly casual in that ineffa- ble French way, and a woman whom, if she was in a line-up of random people and you were asked “Which of the assembled is most likely to be a Voodoo priestess?”, you’d not hesitate to select, just because she’s simply startling.
As she passes by Sainsbury’s I see she’s wearing a long black velvet cape over a black, floor-length scoop-necked empire line dress that’s cut to subtly reveal black lace beneath as she walks. She’s dressed all in black bar a deep red sash in her hair. Over her head and shoulders is a lace-like shawl (black) worn like a mantilla. It’s as if the eighteenth century is strolling slap- bang into the present. But what really stands out is her absolute poise and self- composure.
As the extraordinary pair draw nearer, I think she must be reserved, cool and, assessing, tricky to interview. But she breaks into a big warm smile and embraces us. She is radiant. Beautiful. Utterly composed. And back in my kitchen, Benjamin and Noel are easy guests. “No, no, just water. Sans gas. Tap? Oui, merci.”
Obviously keen to get to the Voodoo part of the proceedings as quickly as possi- ble, I’m unsure about the etiquette of this. Perhaps it’s very private. Hidden. Practice of it in Haiti was punishable by law and demonised by the Protestant and Catholic missionaries. A ban implemented in 1934 was not lifted until 1987 and though it was given legal recognition in 2003, after the 2010 earthquake in which an estimated quarter of a million people died, mobs
lynched at least forty Voodoo priests, believing them to have played a part in the subsequent cholera epidemic.
So I ask Benjamin to start at the begin- ning. “I was born in November 1971” (the year Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier took over from dad – despotism and nepotism running in the family). “My story is compli- cated. I was brought up in a Protestant religious family. My mother had died giv- ing birth to me in the countryside in the mountains. There were no medical ser- vices,” she says. “If there had been a doc- tor my mother would not have died.”
“The Protestant pastor was at the birth, the Catholic and the Voodoo priests. In Voodoo, when the mother dies with the baby inside, the priestess helps the child to be born without carrying the mother’s spirit. They were waiting for the priestess, but I came out anyway.”
“The pastor called me Moonlight as it brightens up people’s lives.”
“The pastor and his mother ran the orphanage in a village in the countryside 15 kilometres outside Port -. They adopted me. I was the youngest of their four adopt- ed children. I had biological brothers and sisters, but they all died. My adopted par- ents were over-protective.”
“I started singing hymns in church, and at home we listened to classical music. After 5pm, we listened to ’30s jazz, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. But for me singing church songs was not enough. I knew the stories from when I was born, people from all the different religions praying at my birth and I thought, ‘every- one was communicating with the same God from the human heart and we should all know that we are all going in the same direction.’ I want to express that unity in my music, wherever you come from, what- ever your roots, we are all the same. And I wanted to go back deeper into the coun- tryside to explore my roots.”
Benjamin left the orphanage when she was seventeen. She says, “I realised that I was from a privileged background, and I wanted to explore and defend the wonderful universe, to look outwards and to feel free. And I didn’t want to make music like everyone was doing in 1988 or ‘89. I wanted to make ‘musique racines’. Roots music.”
In 1986 Benjamin had met guitarist Max Aubain in Port-Au-Prince and through him the Haitian poet, novelist and philosopher Jean Claude Martineau (who later in 2012 published Haïti en Six Leçons: Opinions et idées). Martineau wrote lyrics for Benjamin to sing. They took her to meet Voodoo musicians and “people who are immersed in Voodoo ceremony.” She had a good friend who’d been initiated as a priestess and says it all felt familiar to her, because “In Haiti Voodoo is all around. You hear it out of the window, the music, at night. You feel it around you. It’s just there. Very strongly. And I know if I’m going to express myself in music, I have to do it from my background.”
With Aubain she won a televised music competition on Telemax in 1989 and when Aubain subsequently died, she “was lost.”
W
anting to study singing, Benjamin secured a place at the Ecole National des Artes, where she also enrolled in traditional
dance. Earning money working as a back- ing singer in Port-au-Prince and through braiding hair, she was forced to give both these up when she found her own apart- ment in the capital in 1996. In order to pay the rent she pitched for a full-time job in JC Martineau, a photography studio and print processors.
“I told the secretary I had an appoint- ment to meet the director. When I saw him he said:
“Do you have an appointment?” “No.”
“So you lied?” “Yes.”
“Have you done this work before?” “No. But I know how to sing.” “I cannot help you.”
“Yes you can. You can employ me so I can earn money to do what I want to do.”
“He called within a week. I looked after the till. I hate figures, but he said ‘You are so determined you will be fine.’”
She says the accounting was problem- atic. “If people didn’t have money, I let it go. I told him, ‘They need photos to sell to get money for food. These are local peo- ple. You must give them a break.’”
Benjamin met her husband Pierre, a carpenter originally from Paris, when he was working with an NGO in Port-au- Prince. When he returned to Toulouse in 2002, she went with him. Here Benjamin attended the Music Halle, the first school in France, she says, to “train professional musicians in jazz and ‘actual music.’” She studied “vocals, composition and writing, and took practical workshops” whilst per- forming in bands with other students. The two years she was there, she says, “Opened my mind to new musical experi- ences and genres.”
Forming the band Dyaoulé Pemba, the line-up featured two percussionists (Loic Farge and Johann Azuelos or Florent Tisseyre), double bass (Pascal Marrou) and guitar (Cyril Amourette). Gigging around Toulouse, they came to the attention of the artist manager François Bloque, who continues to work with Benjamin today.
He tells me that “People were talking
about her. I saw her perform in the Bijou Club, which is famous for singers, in early 2006. I liked the music, how she moved, and what she wanted to achieve.” They released an album, Moonlight Sings Haiti, in 2007, which was “more smooth and quiet Creole and jazzy songs” that they toured in France. He confirms her aims then were the same: “Yes, she wants to show people what is the real Haiti.”
This was followed in 2011 by the release of the album Mouvman (Creole for ‘movement’ which, says Bloque, refers to the earthquake of the year before). Released to critical acclaim, the album received airplay on French, Dutch and Bel- gian national radio. The name of the band had changed to simply Moonlight Ben-
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