Past the seamstresses in the downtown parlor of the brightly painted colonial-style row house, up the creaky wooden stairs, one of Haiti's national treasures is bent over an empty page of sheet music.

Today the girl gets up,
she's counting the raindrops that fall from the sky.
My friends, she's crazy!
Oh help, crazy people are in charge in the country,
You should see how that girl is worked up...

One hand on a tape player, the other clutching a worn Number 2 pencil, he pushes play and stop, play and stop, listening to the trumpets, the saxophones, the singer. Composed in 1982, the tune was a "greatest hit." But the sheet music for it, carefully written out in the composer's own hand, has disappeared.

"We were on tour in New York," the man says without looking up. "We showed up at the club where we had left the rented instruments and our music the night before. It was all gone."

So now, when Haiti's oldest big band wants to resurrect a hit like "La Folie" (Craziness), someone has to copy out the parts. And when it comes to copying parts, nobody does it better than seventy-five-year-old Hulric Pierre-Louis, one of the seven young men who founded Septentrional over half a century ago.

"I wanted us to have our own orchestra. My dream was for musicians to be respected," says Pierre-Louis, known universally as "the Maestro."

The Caribbean sunlight is streaming through the gauze curtains and into his white hair. Below on the streets, the used-glass man clang-clang-clangs on an empty bottle to let people know he is passing. The vegetable lady, giant overflowing basket balanced on her head, calls out her wares. Strains from a church choir rehearsal float on the breeze and clash with the raspy Haitian rapper's tune the pirated cassette seller is advertising, blasting beyond recognition on a cheap boom box.

Despite the rhythms and music everywhere in Haitian life, a musical career was not considered honorable when Pierre-Louis was growing up in the northern port town of Cap-HaˆØtien in the 1930s. His father had him studying to be a tailor. But then the young Pierre-Louis was suddenly an orphan, on his own. He quit school, his only hope a gift for the guitar.

After playing in a few groups and teaching himself flute and saxophone, in 1948 his trio and a quartet merged to found a group they named after their hometown. "Septentrional" means "northern" in French (as well as in English and Spanish).

Fifty-five years later, the twenty-piece orchestra plays hundreds of gigs across Haiti and travels to the U.S. and even Europe almost every year. They have over 350 original songs and 42 records or CDs to their name. And they own the Feu Vert (Green Light) nightclub and movie theater, a big accomplishment for a Haitian band, most of whom struggle to survive.

Septentrional's saxophone section, above,...

...at a fifty-fifth anniversary concert, advertised on a Port-au-Prince street, opposite

Fans like Garry Montestime, president of CoSepten, with friend Nancy Adolphe, above, help support this venerable traveling band.

Opposite: In Cap-HaˆØtien, Septentrional's birthplace, these young girls brighten a doorway in a town once known for gaily painted buildings, like the house of "Maestro" Hulric Pierre-Louis and the band's nightclub and movie theater, the Feu Vert

Septentrional has practically defied gravity. In a country where political parties split more often than seize power and the National Palace has changed hands fifty-three times in less than two hundred years, Septentrional is still intact. They have played together for fifty-five years, six years longer than the average Haitian lives, making music through dictatorships, democratic interludes, coup d'ˆ©tats, and chaos.

"It's a major thing," Pierre-Louis agrees as he travels to a New York gig during the group's fifty-fifth anniversary tour in the U.S. "With all the problems in our country, if we can reach fifty-five, that's a big deal."

I'm a farmer
I live in the plains.
I don't know anything about people who wear fancy suits
and ties.
I work the land.
I know the trees.
I watch for the new moon so I know it's time to plant...

"I remember when we didn't even have instruments," Pierre-Louis muses. "I used to rent a saxophone for five gourdes [US$1 at the time]. Rather than turning it in after a concert I'd hide with it for a couple of days so I could practice."

The group lacked a repertoire, too, so Pierre-Louis and other members would gather every day at a barbershop on 12th Street where an old Phillips tube radio in the corner relayed Dominican and Cuban music shows. They copied out what they heard or wrote new pieces based on what they could remember.

Cuban and Dominican music--sons, meringues, boleros--was popular in Haiti, but when Septentrional was founded in 1948, there was also a strong Haitian current. The country was only a dozen years out of the first U.S. occupation (1915-34), a brutal and profoundly disturbing experience for many Haitians who were brought face-to-face with racism and a terrifying levied labor system. When Marines rounded up and forced farmers to work on road-building crews, people were reminded of the slavery their ancestors had defeated only a century or so earlier.

In the countryside, Haitians fought back in what is known as the Caco War. Somewhere between thirty-five hundred and fifteen thousand Haitians were gunned down or died in prisons or concentration camps before the conflict was over. In the cities, intellectuals and students, supported by a small anti-imperialist movement in the U.S., spoke out, published, and marched. By the time the occupation ended, it had left an indelible print on the Haitian soul. One result was the ideological current indigenisme, which opposed the U.S. occupation, the Haitian elites' collaboration with the occupant, and the deification of everything French.

Writer and ethnographer Jean Prince-Mars lambasted intellectuals and artists for "collective Bovaryism" or the attempt "to conceive of a society in a way other than it is" in his 1928 Ainsi parle l'Oncle, making fun of what he said was an attempt to try to "create colored Frenchmen." Prince-Mars advocated an exploration and valorization of Haitian folk culture and even suggested musicians--then under the spell of U.S. and Latin jazz, as well as the French classical music handed down from the colonial era--look to Vodou for "plainchant" and rhythms.

Various Haitian classical and jazz groups heeded the call. By the mid-1940s there was what musicologist Gage Averill, in his book A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti, called an "indigenous school of music." Vodou songs, rhythms, and instruments were incorporated by different kinds of groups. This was also Haiti's bˆ®l epˆ¾k, or "beautiful period," at least for the country's tiny elite and middle class. Jazz bands and orchestras played Latin, U.S., and the new Haitian indigenous compositions in new nightclubs and hotels all over the capital as the city celebrated its bicentennial in 1949.

But Septentrional remained relegated to the north. In the Haitian spatial mentality, everything beyond the "Republic of Port-au-Prince" is considered "Hicksville." The main benefit of that prejudice was that Septentrional developed a strong regional following in a closed cultural context. The group could take the time to develop its own style, combining Cuban, Dominican, and Vodou influences with rhythms specific to the region.

"The group's music was definitely born in the indigenisme context," explains Nikol Levy, a musician and arranger who recently became the group's musical director. "But Septen's indigenisme is not the same as the music in the capital," he adds. "It is definitely northern. The Vodou rhythms of the north are not the same as in the Artibonite Valley or in Port-au-Prince."

Septentrional started to take off. By this time Pierre-Louis had become director and was writing many of Septen's tunes. One way for the band to continue to forge their own path was to put their name on their own rhythm, the Maestro recalls.

"We called it the rhythme du feu [fire rhythm]. It's somewhere between konpa dirˆ®k and kadans ranpa [two popular sixties musical styles] with Ibo and Petro rhythms," he says. (Ibo and Petro are two "nations" or families of Vodou spirits. There are specific rhythms and drums associated with them.) Fire rhythm's style sounded Latin and resembled konpa, but the driving drum beat added a definitive northern Haitian flavor. Soon people were calling the group a "ball of fire."

Septentrional orchestra! A ball of fire for Haiti!
They come up with new things to satisfy their fans!
When they set themselves a goal, they achieve it!
With Septentrional, the countryside gets respect!

The new sound helped the group break out of the provincial leagues. That was important not only for their musical success, but also because Pierre-Louis, fiercely proud of his group's origins, had something to prove. In addition to believing music should be an "honorable" career, he felt firmly that his region and its people--small farmers, shopkeepers, fishermen--also deserved respect from the swank city folk. To this day, Pierre-Louis's favorite tune is his "City of Cap-HaˆØtien," written in 1962 to honor the colorful city with its wooden row houses and the Citadelle, the huge mountain fortress built by tens of thousands of men under the stern rule of revolutionary hero King Henry Christophe after Haiti won independence from France in 1804.

Pierre-Louis, front row center, stands among friends and members of CoSepten in Cap-HaˆØtien, above.

Opposite: Trumpeter Madsen Sylnˆ© the band's current leader, copies out parts next to Danilo Andrˆ©vil.

A highlight of the band's anniversary tour was their July concert on their hometown's main plaza, as this seaside sign advertises, below

By the time Septentrional became a "ball of fire," Francois Duvalier was president, just a few years away from proclaiming himself president for life. Septentrional's stature grew. The group started to get Port-au-Prince gigs--a first for a provincial band. Not known as a Duvalier supporter, Pierre-Louis and his group had a few close calls with regime henchmen before bowing to the inevitable and writing "Duvalier Comes for Seconds" and "Duvalier for Life" in 1963 and 1964. The overnight success of the latter got them an appearance at Duvalier's Presidential Palace.

But most of Septentrional's songs had more genuine messages. In addition to the usual love songs, there were tunes incorporating Haitian proverbs, giving moral lessons like "The Effects of Liquor," commenting on natural disasters or social problems, and songs with a political message. "February 7, 1986" commemorated the day Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier fled Haiti, ending twenty-nine years of dictatorship.

Pierre-Louis has penned over half the group's tunes, which are in Creole, the language all Haitians speak, as well as French, spoken by about 10 percent of the population. But other musicians also get involved. They often write the annual carnival piece collectively. Members range in age from twenty-one to Pierre-Louis's seventy-five and mostly come from Haiti's small middle class from cities and towns in the north. All of them went to school, but not everyone can read music.

Port-au-Prince trumpeter and trombonist Danilo Andrˆ©vil, who joined in 1977, is an exception. By the time he joined up, the group had made it big, even playing Madison Square Garden in New York City.

"I was crazy about Septentrional. I knew all their music," he remembers, before playing a gig on the New York tour last fall.

The young Andrˆ©vil was sent north by his music teacher. Haiti's armed forces had asked the professor to send musicians for the army band.

"My parents had to say yes because he was an important man," Andrˆ©vil, forty-nine, recalls, but he didn't want to go. Haiti's army was part of the Duvalier dictatorship's machine of repression. He put on the uniform grudgingly.

Then, a Septentrional trumpeter got sick and someone asked Andrˆ©vil to sit in. A year or two later he was asked to join full time. He quit his army job.

"That was one of the happiest days in my life," says the trumpeter, who now has played so much, part of his upper lip is missing pigment.

Other musicians have come from church and high-school band backgrounds. Guitarist Joseph Renˆ© first learned his instrument from a young seminarian named Jean-Bertrand Aristide, now the country's president.

"I have grown up in Septen," Renˆ© says. "My whole life is Septen. I should say that Septen has given me more than I have given it."

One thing Septen does not have, however, is women. Asked why not, Andrˆ©vil is a little embarrassed. "Well, when there are women, one guy might get an idea and try to get the woman interested, and then the others might get jealous," he says. "If it's all guys, we are more like a team, a family. We can eat from the same plate. Three of us can split a beer."

Andrˆ©vil and Renˆ© both noted that navigating fifty-five years of political, social, and musical changes has not always been easy. And as Haiti's economy has gone from bad to worse and foreign music has made greater and greater forays into the Haitian countryside and psyche, the group sometimes plays to half-empty halls. Still, no other Haitian orchestra has survived as long.

"Under the Maestro, we have a clear sense of leadership, of direction. We modernize all the time. We still play the fire rhythm, but we keep it up to date," Andrˆ©vil explains. "Nowadays, the young people like to wave their hands in the air. So we added 'raise your hands!' sections to our songs."

When June dawns, people start to heat up,
festival season is here.
It's a tradition, a big rendezvous for Haitians.
Those overseas come back, those around here prepare,
everyone's going to celebrate.
During festival time, they get married,
they divorce and they reconcile.
Festival season is here!

Cap-HaˆØtien's main square is wall-to-wall people, straining and pushing toward the stage, where gold lamˆ©-bedecked musicians swing their saxophones and trumpets. Five singers in matching shirts sway microphones and hips. Electric-white smiles shine out into the darkness. The fifty-fifth anniversary concert couldn't be in a better spot--in the shadow of the Notre Dame Cathedral, in the heart of their beloved city.

Raise your hands! Raise your hands!

The crowd goes wild. Septentrional might be fifty-five years old with tunes dating back to the sixties, but its fans are anything but oldsters. Young women climb onto the shoulders of men, boys rip off their shirts and twirl them in the air. Many wear Septen's colors--yellow and green. The whole plaza is yelling, bouncing up and down, undulating to the beat. The mayor stops by, local policemen climb on stage to pay their respects, a former star soloist comes up to sing a favorite, causing even more frenzy.

Pierre-Louis, who has not played the sax since he suffered a stroke a few years back, even dons a lamˆ© shirt and joins the line of singers for a round of "Testimony," one of many songs that brags about Septen's music.

Oh, Septen, my love!
When I dance to you
Yes, I am so happy!

Like many Haitian orchestras, the group has plenty of pieces that pay homage to itself, its fans, and its popularity. It is part of the pride, both from within the group and from its fans and supporters, that keeps Septentrional going.

Another factor is the group's village festival appearances. All across Haiti, cities, towns, and villages celebrate their patron-saint days with religious ceremonies, a street fair, and often a Vodou ceremony or ritual, since many Vodou spirits are related to Catholic saints.

On tour in New York late last year, Pierre-Louis visited the Statue of Liberty, above. His music keeps him rooted to Haiti, however, and to his birthplace of Cap-HaˆØtien, top,...

...where to dedicated fans, opposite, he is the maestro and Septen the ball of fire

For Haiti's rural residents, still the majority of the population, festival time is not only the time to come to thank a saint or a spirit for a good year or ask a favor for the next. It's also a time to have fun. That makes it Septentrional's "high season." The group piles into their bus and bounces along the country's rough, unpaved roads to play dance after dance in the cities and towns across Haiti's mountainous territory.

The day after their anniversary concert, Septen heads out on a three-night festival run, kicking off the tour with one of the group's most important festival stops: Plaine du Nord.

Night is falling. The group is setting up, building a stage where sheep usually graze and hooking up their giant generator so the power-less town would have lights and sound. "Maestro" Pierre-Louis is angry that the ice for the cold drinks stand hasn't arrived. Revenues come from the soup, fried pork, beer, and soda stands as well as ticket sales.

Nearby, the pounding of drums rises above the hammering and the din of prayers and chants from the nearby church. The beat is the same as Septen's fire rhythm, almost. It is a Petro beat. Under a makeshift palm-frond roof, drummers pound out the complex rhythm.

Plaine du Nord's annual festival honors St. James of Compostela as well as Ogou, the war god, and Damballah, the serpent spirit. Thousands of Vodou pilgrims come to pray, make offerings, or bathe in the mud pool. (See Amˆ©ricas, November-December, 2003.) Luckily for Septen, thousands--dressed in their Sunday best or the most expensive U.S. castoffs they can afford--also come to dance away the night.

One table hosts a group whose clothes look like they are straight from New York City, and they are. Members of the Septentrional Committee ("CoSepten") and other faithful "septentologues" and "fanatik" (fans) from Canada and New York come back to Haiti every year for the Plaine du Nord festival.

"The 'ball of fire' is in my blood!" says Chantal Dadaille. An accountant by day, the perennially smiling Dadaille, a thirty-eight-year-old resident of Brooklyn, New York, was "born into Septen." Her mother was a diehard who brought her to concerts and dances when she was a child. Later she clamored to attend the group's "youth balls."

Although her entire family emigrated to the U.S. when she was a teenager, every summer Dadaille takes vacation time to coincide with Septentrional's summer town festival gigs.

"Septen is my family. It's how I stay in touch with Haiti," she says.

Garry Montestime also flew in. A resident of Queens, New York, he is president of CoSepten.

"I've been a Septen militant since 1987," says Montestime, who quit his job as an electrician and became a school bus driver so he would have more time for the group.

"Septen's music helps you develop. It helps you see the difference between good and evil," says the bespectacled man. Three years younger than the group, Montestime's first dance partner was his mother.

Now he dances to Septen every chance he gets--when he flies into Haiti for festivals in July, while co-hosting a weekly Queens radio show called "Dˆ©tente Septen," or during the group's U.S. tours.

"There are Haitians who come to the U.S. and they forget they are Haitians or they pretend they are not Haitians," he says. "Septen makes you remember that we are all Haitians. If you listen to it, you can't avoid that. It reminds us and helps us live together."

We arrived in New York, my friends, it was beautiful!
Fans from all different countries adored us.
Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Americans all said:
"Septentrional--We love you!"

If it weren't for CoSepten, Septentrional might have gone the way of other bands. The group helps manage the orchestra, put out the CDs, and organize its tours. As the country's economy falters--almost 50 percent devaluation has practically eliminated the country's tiny middle class--Septen's revenues have declined. Salaries are based on overall profits, which are divided among the musicians.

"We can't double our ticket prices," says trumpeter Andrˆ©vil, Who is also the group's administrator. "So we leave them the same, but still fewer people come to our dances. They have less money and because of the insecurity, they don't want to go out at night."

And Septentrional's popularity remains circumscribed. So far, they haven't "crossed over" into the "world beat" category like some Haitian groups. Nor do they appeal much to younger urban fans. When Septen plays overseas, the group draws an exclusively Haitian crowd, mostly older immigrants. A recent U.S. tour had them playing at Haitian restaurants, hotel ballrooms, and even an Elk's Club.

In Haiti the draw is bigger. Septentrional's festival appearances are packed. But their capital gigs aren't always so successful. One reason is because Pierre-Louis refuses to pay disk jockeys to play Septen's music, something he says other bands do.

"How can I violate my principles?" he asks.

Septentrional's music is also up against an invasion from overseas. The number of radio stations in the countryside and the capital have increased, and a 1998 study of eleven popular stations found that they play music from Haiti and the Caribbean less than half the time.

"Fifty-five years later, Septentrional is still considered 'country jazz,'" Levy notes, although he feels that its provincial base--the north--and its fans have kept Septentrional alive.

City of Cap-HaˆØtien, you are truly full of chums
With your beautiful colonial-style houses
And your straight streets that everyone folks about...
All fixed up, of if by magic wand, attracting tourists.
A few steps away, not far,
We see the Citadelle, eighth wonder of the world...

Some think Septen's music is too "old fashioned." But Levy and others think this is the group's trump card.

"I think groups like Septentrional have a role to play in the development of a national music with a real Haitian character," says Levy.

They are facing tough odds: Septentrional may be Haiti's longest surviving big band, but aside from a medal they were presented when the group turned fifty, that achievement is ignored by all but the faithful followers. Haiti's government provides practically no patronage to music or musicians beyond the annual carnival celebrations or paying bands to compose political jingles or play at rallies.

Haiti's oldest big band and its leader--who still spends every day copying out music, going to rehearsals, making sure there is ice for the drinks--are ignored by the politicians in the capital, who also appear to be ignoring Pierre-Louis's beloved city. Like much of the country, it is failing, its crumbling wooden houses being replaced by featureless cement block houses. Its "straight streets" are now ringed by slums and full of garbage. And there are no more tourists.

In 1987, Septentrional released the hopeful "Together, Together," where they called for Haitians to work together for democracy. Democracy has been a bit ephemeral, but togetherness--of the musicians under Pierre-Louis's leadership, and of the group's followers--has helped keep the group strong. But as with the country, Septentrional's future is unclear.

"The team spirit inspires you," says Montestime as he gets up to dance under the starry Caribbean sky. "That keeps us going. And our pride. Pride for Cap-HaˆØtien, and for our music: Septentrional."

~~~~~~~~

By Jane Regan

Photographs by Daniel Morel

Jane Regan lives and works in Haiti, where she writes for the Miami Herald, Latinamerica Press, and Interpress Service, as well as provides coverage for Associated Press television. Daniel Morel has been taking pictures in his native Haiti for over twenty years. His work has been featured in exhibitions in the U.S. and the Caribbean. Regan and Morel co-direct Wozo Productions, a multimedia production partnership focusing on Haiti's people, politics, history, and culture (www.wozoproductions.org).