The lasotè, song and dance of mutual aid
Joining forces in joy to work together could be the slogan of lasotè. It's a communal gathering around an activity made much more enjoyable, and working gives way to the joy of getting together to turn the soil together. Singing, drumming, tibwa and rhythmic lambi conches all contribute to this. Lasotè is a moment of solidarity, conviviality and sharing, a tradition in the farming world of the North that must endure. Lasotè is the granson, music used for ploughing and making dèyè (behind) furrows. It's the mazonn, music used to make douvan (front) furrows. It's the dance after all the work. The helping hand is just as convivial in the South.
Singing: the criers take it in turns to declaim their song, which is always topical, as in bèlè (traditional song).
The drum: the traditional bèlè drum is a specialized instrument used to play the bèlè, the music that accompanies the traditional dance of the same name. The drum can be constructed from a small wooden barrel (quite rare these days). The entire top is covered with goatskin, preferably for its quality. The bottom, which allows the sound to escape, is not closed. Given the difficulty of finding small drums on the market, the drum is increasingly made entirely by a specialist. The drummer lays it down to straddle it. He strikes the skin covering the top of the instrument with his hands, putting rhythm to it, and sometimes he slides his heel over it without socks, to make it snore. Alas, beliefs are hard-wired: just as the ancients forbade a woman to climb a tree, so as not to transform the fruit she would make sour, they also considered it "sacrilege" to let a woman ride a drum: she would be impure. That's right!
The tibwa: made up of a long bamboo 2 to 3 metres long, placed on two fork-shaped poles, two sticks called tibwa are needed to set the cadence. These are made from small branches of Indian wood, for its strength, or mahogany.
Lambi conches: these are the same as those used by fishermen to attract customers, although they are chosen to be small so as not to be covered by the sound of the drum.
The granson. The granson is the music used for ploughing and making dèyè (behind) furrows, i.e. when the sloping land is worked from bottom to top, using hoes, and the furrows thus made are placed behind the group of bourè (ploughmen ). It is played by criers who take turns singing and beating the tibwa, drums and one or more lambi conches. Musicians and bourè had to be perfectly synchronized, as their hoe strokes were placed to the sound of the conch, so that all the hoes rose and fell at the same time
La mazonn. The mazonn is the music used to make the douvan (front) furrows. The soil is worked from top to bottom, and the furrows made are placed in front of the bourè, which move backwards down the slope. It's a highly syncopated rhythm. The criers take turns singing without tibwa. The bourè don't work in cadence, as the task at hand requires large and/or small hoe strokes. The virgin field is siyoné (furrowed) by the bourè. If you ran out of energy and slowed down, the one behind you, carried away by his efforts, risked unintentionally injuring your heel with the cutting edge of his hoe. Younger people and older ones were better placed to do the finishing work: the ends of furrows, or canals and false furrows. The effort required was intense.
The danmié. A lasotè usually ends with a danmié , a martial dance on the freshly ploughed earth.
The lavwa bef, a song of incitement
Little known by young Martiniquais, the traditional Lavwa bef rhythm is part of their heritage. It reveals a part of Martinique's identity that is little known to the general public. In Trinité, the Galion farm has chosen to take into account this ancestral contribution and revitalize it in order to pass on this knowledge to future generations. This is especially true of the Spourtoune dwelling.
Lavwa Bef, which literally means "the voice that incites the ox", is an a cappella song sung in the workplace. Towards the end of the 19th century and up to the middle of the 20th century, it was used as a song to accompany ploughing in the agricultural sector, a period that preceded mechanization and the advent of the "Ferguson", tractors whose proper name became common in Creole to designate the machine that was to replace oxen.
The voice of the farmer-singer leads the oxen through the task of ploughing, with a special kind of tremolo. The requested ox acts and responds as if conditioned by the timbre. Man and animal work in symbiosis, and nature is spared the harmful effects of mechanical machinery.
With several partners, the Galion farm plans to revive the Lavwa bef tradition in the North Atlantic, notably in the light of the know-how of Samaritan Benoît Rastocle, one of the last survivors, now aged 88. A bèlè singer in his youth, he traditionally worked the oxen in the fields to the rhythm of his voice. He introduces young people to this know-how in order to perpetuate it, but also with a view to preserving nature from the effects of carbon dioxides. Lavwa bef is an eco-friendly way to work your field while protecting the environment.
The songs of bèlè and ladja in the history of Martinique
Testimony of G.-H. Léotin.
Authentic Martinique folklore. We're all familiar with the song Adieu foulard, adieu madras, and we may well wonder whether its lyrics are not the origin of the expression doudouisme, a literary style that presents a mawkish, sweet and picturesque image of the West Indies: " Doudou an mwen, ki ka pati, Élas, Élas, et pour toujours " or "Mon chéri qui s'en va, hélas, hélas, et pour toujours".
Without minimizing the distress of the young woman in the song, who is mourning her dear sailor, it has to be said that authentic Martinican folklore presents a harsher, deeper, less romantic reality among the men and women of the Martinique country. Based on a few excerpts from heritage songs, we'll try to show how folklore (in the noble sense of the word) often expresses what the country's past was like, evokes certain remarkable events that took place there (particularly on a political level) and also manifests its sociology - gender relations, for example.. We'll be focusing in particular on the lyrics of bèlè and ladja songs, popular music par excellence, not forgetting certain biguines or mazurkas, which sometimes feature themes and even lyrics from bèlè and ladja.
Recognition and revaluation of the cultural heritage as a whole. Slavery itself seems to be relatively absent from bèlè and ladja songs. There is at least one case in point: a grand-bèlè, sung by Siméline Rangon, recorded by Anca Bertrand née Ionescu, in Galaţi, Romania, a journalist of Romanian origin who died in 1972, wife of Martinican painter Alexandre Bertrand and founder of the Fonds Saint Jacques museum in Sainte-Marie. She worked for the knowledge, recognition and enhancement of Martinique's cultural heritage. So, in the mid-1950s, she recorded this grand-bèlè on a vinyl entitled Folklore Martinique, with a fine text by the Basque-born writer Salvat Etchart, a Martinican by adoption, on the cover. Here's the chorus :
- Manman, wé, wé, wé Ida-é ?
- Ida é vandi é livré, Ida-é !
("Manman où est, où est, où est Ida - é? Ida est vendue et livrée, Ida-é!").
Songs, events and facts of history. Guadeloupean writer Simone Schwartz-Bart evokes this song at the beginning of Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, in the second part of chapter 1. She quotes the lyrics and presents it as an old slave song hummed by her grandmother, suggesting Guadeloupe-Martinique communication at this level - this kind of circulation is not uncommon.
With regard to another major event in Martinique's history, we had the opportunity to hear (in the late 1960s) a ladja song with this refrain: Dé banbou filé, Manwel! (Two slender bamboos, Manuel! taken from Dé kout kouto filé by singer Hugues Charlec). It should be pointed out that during the Insurrection du Sud, tapered bamboo was used as a weapon by the insurgents, which suggests that the lyrics of this song date from this period. This long-obscured Insurrection du Sud in Martinique has given rise (and this is a certainty) to a bèlè li Sid (southern bèlè) song that evokes the stages of the people's struggle for liberation from slavery, with the idea of divine Providence watching over them and guiding them along the path to freedom: An 89, yo té bliyé nou, an 48 yo té lé masakré nou, an 70 mi yo fiziyé nou! Men la Divinité gran ka véyé anlè nou! Nou ké rété isi ala pwochen liméwo!
("In 1789 we were forgotten; in 1848 they wanted to massacre us; in 1870 they shot us! But Great is the Divinity that watches over us! We'll stay here until the next issue!)
Bèlè and ladja frequently speak of the last World War, and of Dissidence (the departure in fishing boats of Martiniquais to join the Allied troops via Dominica or Saint Lucia in the fight against Nazism).
Famous political figures can also be evoked, sometimes with a critical look at the careers of even the greatest figures, such as Joseph Lagrosillère, a very popular Martinican politician: in the bèlè Papa Lago! Mi Lago! (Lago defends the unfortunate... / (Then) Lago defends the fortunate!...). A ladja song evokes a tragic event in Martinican political life: the assassination of Charles Zizine and Louis des Étages in 1925, a tragedy that left a number of Martinicans disgusted with politics, which at the time was strongly marked by electoral fraud and police violence on behalf of the powerful.
In biguine, the singer Léona Gabriel, a grande dame of Martinican song, helped keep the February 1900 shoot-out in Le François fresh in the memory, with the song Manman lagrev baré mwen..
A song of the workers of the land, in a country that was long covered in sugar cane, bèlè will speak of working conditions, workers' demands, the distress of men and women and what they handle all day long: the different varieties of sugar cane: malavwa, maframé, péwodji, kokotéyis, béyach (B.H.), kann Barbad... The bèlè Malavwa , sung as a duet by Siméline and Ti Émile, concentrates these two themes: the evocation of a beautiful variety of cane and that of the misery and blues of working women: Mwen ka fimen, mwen ka bwè wonm, man ka jwé sèbi, manmay... Man pousuivi, anviyolé pasé pèsonn (...): "I smoke, I get drunk on rum, I play dice, I'm persecuted, raped, like nobody else in the world...".
We can also recall the extent to which Creole vocabulary has drawn on the cane culture, with, for example, these ancient metaphors: anpil (a pile), anpatjé (a packet), anchay (a load), anlo (a lot, a lot of)... all these terms for "a lot" come from the cane. The old expressions anba maframé a and anba péwodji a, which signify a painful existence, that of the farm workers of the " djoubakan " era , toiling away under the drudgery that led Jacques Roumain to say that "if work were a good thing, the rich would have monopolized it long ago
Men and women in folk songs
Tenderness and romance are not unknown to Creole culture, of course, but folk songs are quite marked by the often conflicting aspect of the male/female relationship, and by the sometimes explicit nature of the amorous act - for those who know the double meaning of the words and expressions used in the songs. Here are a few examples. In ladja Shirley, man ké déchiré'w, there's a dialogue between a young girl and a man with a particularly macho attitude - as is unfortunately often the case - who talks of "déchirer", of " dérayé" (esquinter, éreinter). This is also the theme of the bèlè songs entitled Ô ! Julie, ô! and Manzè Marie-Jeanne Diaka, which include more or less "hard" versions, for those who know the subtleties of the Creole language, and who know that things are always said "in parable", in roundabout metaphors, to such an extent that the neophyte, even with all his good will, won't understand much. One of the beauties of the Creole language is the art of saying without naming.
Bèlè li Sid, on the other hand, is often sung by women, and frequently deals with dramatic relationships between couples. They can be likened to the blues, a song of distress (although some southern bèlè can be cheerful, even boisterous). The image of the woman in these bèlè is not always that of a submissive, resigned person who suffers and complains. There are also occasional cries of revolt against male domestic oppression, as in the song : Man débarasé épi mako: "I got rid of my man"(mako, from the French maquereau, has, in Creole, among other meanings, the sense of companion in general).
Biguine and bèlè, city and country
Some of Martinique's bèlè songs can be found in biguines and Carnival tunes. It's as if the popular background of bèlè infused the rhythms of city ballrooms and Carnival overflow. Here are just a few examples of these heritage tunes that have undoubtedly come down from the countryside to the city:
Édamise Oh! (Édamise being a feminine first name): this tune sung during Carnival in the vidés is also (and probably first) a bèlè song.
The song La Montagne Vauclin, in the repertoire of the Morne des Esses bèlè group "Sapotille", and apparently an old bèlè tune, is also sung by a singer like Léona Gabriel.
At the home of Ti-Émile, a monument to Martinican bèlè who died in 1992, you can hear tunes taken up by carnival-goers such as Au pas, Au pas, Manège and A! Djab la pran yo, a song in which we find the Biyabi ritornello (well known to carnival-goers in the not-too-distant past), and whose meaning remains enigmatic for us - if meaning there is to seek....
The hypothesis that bèlè may have served as a matrix for many popular songs in general, and Carnival songs in particular, is entirely plausible. It's as if the song of the countryside had come down to the city.
