Haitian Beatz

People in the United States chuckled when former entertainer Sonny Bono was elected mayor of a California town. In Haiti, political events are rarely a source of amusement. Prior to 1995, Manno

Charlemagne was one of Haiti's most popular singer-songwriters. However, his career took an ironic twist in July of that year when he was elected mayor of Haiti's largest city, Port-au-Prince. Charlemagne had spent his entire musical career writing and singing songs of protest against the oppressive regimes that had governed his country. Often, he paid for this agitation with beatings and imprisonment. His election victory raised a poignant question for politically oriented artists all over the world: Is it easier to effect political change from within a system or as an outsider?

Charlemagne was born in 1948, in one of the many impoverished sections of Port-au-Prince. Like many children in Haiti, he grew up largely on the streets, and it was there that he received his early political education. Rebellion, though brutally supressed, was constantly in the air. In a 1995 interview with The Progressive, Charlemagne recalled the 1956 overthrow of President Paul Magloire. He told of witnessing bloody battles and the construction of homemade bombs by local agitators. This atmosphere of political unrest helped to shape the revolutionary outlook that Charlemagne articulated so clearly in his songs.

At the age of 15, Charlemagne was arrested and tortured after fighting with a member of the Tonton Macoutes, the notoriously brutal police force of Haitian dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier. Over the next several years, Charlemagne occupied himself with political activism. This period lasted until the end of the 1960s when, as he told Fernando Gonzalez of the Boston Globe in a 1992 interview, "there was a major political repression against intellectuals and everything that was cultural or political."

Miami

The dirty words adults used when they argued, the songs in Catholic school, and the people hiding in his yard from the gunfire as President Paul Magloire was overthrown in 1956--all these form part of the texture of Manno Charlemagne's songs.

"I was raised by the priests, so you might hear that Gregorian thing when I'm singing. Since I was young, just sitting around in the neighbor-hood put me in some very subversive company. I would see guys making homemade bombs. They'd call me over and say, 'Hey, Manno, walk slow and give this to that guy over there.'"