Mother of Haiti

Later Demesmin and the other participants pluck a live chicken with their hands, kill it, and clean the insides with lime. The chicken is an offering to the gods, who, unlike those of other religions, need sustenance. Vodou belief holds that a well-fed lwa is a strong lwa, and a strong lwa is better able to provide assistance when called upon. The bird is fried in small jars the size of flowerpots to prepare a ceremonial dish called boule zen. The ceremony is performed to harness the power of the fire, and part of it involves adding balls of cornmeal to the boiling oil, then removing the balls with bare hands. "If someone is not capable of doing that, you don't have the power of the fire," she says.

Vodou is the soul of Haiti, and music is the soul of vodou. Vodou music is played primarily on drums made for specific occasions or ceremonies, with accompaniment on rattles, conch shells, and gongs. Mesmerizing rhythms that got their start in Africa and came to Haiti with the slave trade are the signature of the musical style.

Demesmin's music draws heavily on these rhythms. "The spirituality of my race, the mythology of my race, the instrument created by my race, which is the drum, you will find very sharp in each song that I sing."

Her first album, Carole Maroule was released in 1978, followed by Carole Min Rara in 1980, Carole Lawouze in 1987, and Kongayiti-Afrika in 1998. They are all self-released or on the Haitian label Marc Records, though her last effort was recorded both in Haiti and New York.

Her work doesn't fit neatly into any category -- call it jazz-inflected folk that often borrows a calypso beat. Her songs, such as "Bato Negrier" off her second album, are stories of Haiti. "Bato Negrier" means "slave ship" in the African Congo dialect Dawomen, and the song speaks of the death, disease, and other hardships that slaves from that region experienced on their forced journey to Haiti.

Another song from the same record, "Rara," is about the Haitian holiday of the same name that happens each year around Easter. It is the one day when people are free to speak their minds, says Demesmin, to say what they think about their neighbors or their government and not have to fear repercussions.

Her latest record, Kongayiti-Afrika, is heavy on world beat influence, which Demesmin traces to her time at Berklee College where she went to school with musicians from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. It's an updated sound for Demesmin, who as one observer of Haitian culture notes, isn't exactly cutting-edge on the island anymore. "There are a lot of new, young artists," says Kim Ives, a writer for Haiti Progres newspaper, based in Brooklyn. "She is considered one of the grand dames of Haitian singing."

Demesmin is well-known and respected in Haiti for her music, notes Ives, but there is one black mark against her: She played a concert in 1979 attended by Simone Duvalier, wife of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Haiti's bloody dictator from 1957 to 1971. Duvalier, a country doctor before he rose to power and named himself "president for life," is infamous for spreading terror via his personal police force, the Tonton Macoutes (Creole for "bogeymen").

That an established artist like Demesmin would play for a member of the Duvalier family was interpreted as a sign of allegiance to the regime, says Ives. But that was a long time ago, he adds, and many have forgiven the sin. "My sense is that the bygone has sort of slipped away," he says. "She was sort of pardoned. Enough history has passed so it's not as bitter a memory."

Demesmin says the story is true, but in reality she was one of many artists to perform as a traveling show sponsored by investors in New York, not the Duvaliers. She scoffs at the notion that she gave a command performance to please the Duvaliers, noting that, when asked to play a private birthday party for Simone Duvalier, she declined. "I said I would be released from my contract in three hours and on the next plane," she says.

These days Demesmin is neither priestess nor diva. She has cut her spiritual counseling to a minimum and put all her singing on hold in order to devote her time and energy to her third persona: activist.

Demesmin was in Haiti in 1986 when Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's regime toppled and the dictator fled to France. It was the best of times and the worst of times for the country, she says. There was hope with the end of the brutal Duvalier regime, yet there was also a great deal of violence and unrest. "The country was very insecure," she says. "People were killing people for anything. Your father had a problem with me? That is a good time to kill, I am free to kill."