Check out this free event honoring Haitian vodou practice and performance!
Center for Traditional Music and Dance and Ayiti Fasafas
in partnership with Brooklyn Public Library
present
HAITIAN VODOU IN NEW YORK CITY
Vodou artists and leaders come together
to honor New York City Manbo
MAMA LOLA
with a special performance of Vodou songs by KONGO
Saturday, June 15th, 2PM
Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn, NY
FREE ADMISSION – PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY
AS SEATING FOR THIS EVENT IS LIMITED!
The Center for Traditional Music and Dance and its Haitian Community Cultural Initiative, Ayiti Fasafas, invite you to “Verite Sou Tanbou: Truths about Haitian Vodou,” a three-part series of educational workshops on Haitian Vodou practice and performance in New York City.
Our third and final event this season, “Haitian Vodou in New York City,” offered in partnership with Brooklyn Public Library, starts at 2PM in the Dweck Center Auditorium of Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza Branch. Local Vodou artists and practitioners come together to demonstrate a variety of Haitian Vodou art forms and to honor New York City Manbo (Vodou priestess) Mama Lola, whose lifelong contributions to preserving and passing on the traditions of Vodou in Brooklyn and beyond, have been documented in Karen McCarthy Brown’s recently re-issued classic ethnography, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (University of California Press, 2011). Mama Lola’s daughter, grand-daughter, and family will be on hand as she receives a special award recognizing her special place as a leader and healer in the history of Vodou culture and community.
Brooklyn-based Haitian roots band KONGO, directed by sanba lead singer Oneza Lafontant, will perform traditional Vodou songs, blending a cappellasinging with traditional Vodou drumming and acoustic instrumental accents. A presentation of candid photographs of Vodou ceremony and life in New York City by photographers Kesler Pierre and Tony Savino enhances this program, along with a display of Haitian vèvè (spirit symbol) watercolor paintings by Manbo Makini Armand and friends.
Photo by Brandi C. Kelley, courtesy of Marsha Champagne.
Alourdes Champagne Lovinsky, also known as Mama Lola, was born in Haiti in 1933 and emigrated to New York in 1962. As Karen McCarthy Brown has described her, she combined “the skills of a medical doctor, a psychotherapist, a social worker, and a priest” in her work as a Vodou priestess, coming from a long line of healers in the Vodou tradition. Mama Lola remains an important spiritual leader within Vodou, nationally and internationally, and has passed the tradition on to her daughter and granddaughter as well.
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Image design by Kesler Pierre. kp@keslerpierre.com
Support for “Verite Sou Tanbou” is provided to the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and Ayiti Fasafas by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Booth Ferris Foundation, New York Community Trust, Fund for the City of New York, Con Edison, Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Gilder Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Scherman Foundation, and The Rhodebeck Charitable Trust.
Find out more about CTMD!For more information about upcoming events, what’s happening in New York City’s traditional music and dance scene, to join or to donate, go to CTMD’s website.
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