Rara

What it is

Rara is festival music made for processions. In Haiti it belongs to the street, not to a concert hall. A band walks as it plays, and the crowd walks with it. The core of the sound is a set of bamboo trumpets called vaksin. Around them sit drums, maracas, metal bells and scraped gourds known as güiras or güiros. Players also use alsos, horns fashioned from metal that has already been used, often from coffee cans. Trumpets and saxophones of the ordinary kind may join in as well. Singing is in Haitian Creole, and the words praise the African roots of Haiti's Black majority. Much of the music is African in character, with some Taíno elements.

Origins and history

Rara is thought to have grown up while Haiti was still a French colony called Saint-Domingue, in the years when slavery was the law. Enslaved people were not free to move between plantations or to talk with one another. Church at Easter was the one occasion in the year when they could gather, and they went in chains. Accounts from that time describe Africans and Afro-Creoles walking to worship with drums and other instruments on Easter Sunday. Maroon bands, made up of people who had escaped, are said to have marched with drummers, horns and singers in a similar style. The beat of marching feet carried messages. Later, rara bands filled the streets when the war for independence was won.

Music and dance

The vaksin players work as a team. Each one sounds a short phrase, again and again, and the parts interlock into a single line, a device called hocket. Many players hold a stick and tap the side of the trumpet as they blow. Every band has a rhythm of its own, which marks it out even when the procession passes in darkness. Alongside the musicians walk twirlers who spin metal batons. Dancers move as they please, each in a personal way, and no two look alike. The music always carries words in Haitian Creole, and Vodou practice often runs through the procession as it goes.

What it means

For those who take part, rara holds two things at once. It is a celebration of the present, of being alive and together in the street. It is also a way of remembering the ancestors, the enslaved people whose meetings and messages helped bring the country into being. Many Haitians treat the season as a piece of the revolution's story, kept alive by moving through the streets. Bands have also served political ends. Candidates have paid for songs that praise them and their campaigns, while other lyrics speak plainly about hardship, about poverty and about rule by force. Rara is therefore both a party and a form of speech.

Today and change

Because rara words can bite, the tradition has sometimes been dangerous to practise. At points in Haiti's recent past, bands and other performers have been forbidden to play, and some have been driven out of the country. The folk singer Manno Charlemagne is the best-known case: he went into exile and came home again, and during the 1990s he served as mayor of Port-au-Prince. Outside Haiti, rara has travelled with the people who left. Haitian Americans have kept it going in New York City, where bands play in Prospect Park on Sundays in summer.

How Rara is kept

Bands take to the streets in the weeks leading up to Easter. The season opens on Ash Wednesday and ends at Easter weekend. A band moves at walking pace, the vaksin carrying the tune while drums, bells, rattles and scraped gourds hold the rhythm around it. Twirlers with metal batons go in front or beside the players. Dancers join in from the crowd, each moving in their own way. Words are sung in Haitian Creole, and Vodou practice often runs through the procession. The route takes the group through the neighbourhood, and the crowd grows as it goes. Each band keeps its own signature rhythm.

When and where

Rara is kept in the run-up to Easter. Performances start on Ash Wednesday and build to Easter weekend. Because that date moves with Easter, the season does not fall in the same month each year. In New York City, Haitian American bands play on summer Sundays instead.

Rara belongs to Haiti, where bands play in the street and crowds march and dance along with them. It is strongest in the weeks around Easter, when processions draw people out. Since the 1990s, Haitian Americans have carried the music to the United States, and rara can be heard in New York City, where bands play in Prospect Park on Sundays during the summer.

What Rara means

Part of what rara means is memory. The season is tied to the story of slavery and of the revolution that ended it, and bands are a way of honouring the ancestors who lived through both. Part of what it means is the present: dancing in the street, being together, showing that a people is still standing after hard and thankless work. The parade also holds Vodou practice within it. And because the words can name poverty or oppression, the music can speak for those who have little voice elsewhere.

Days Rara is marked

Questions people ask about Rara

See also

Jingle dressA healing dance and regalia worn by First Nations women at pow wows across North America.Fancy danceA fast-paced, athletic Indigenous dance kept at powwows across North America and beyond.PuntaA lively dance and music style of the Garifuna people, celebrated in Central America and the Caribbean.MaracatuA set of Afro-Brazilian performance traditions from Pernambuco and Ceará featuring drumming, dance, and royal pageantry.

Good reading and sources

• Rara music on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.