A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti

The foundational work on Haitian popular music in the twentieth century, tracing the relationship between music and political power from the U.S. Occupation era through Aristide's 1994 return. Averill, an ethnomusicologist who spent years in Haiti conducting fieldwork, argues that popular music has been a primary arena in which power is contested, legitimated, and resisted. The book provides the best available account of konpa-dirèk's emergence under Duvalier, carnival as political theater, and mizik rasin as a convergence of Vodou revival, Afrocentrism, and Haitian nationalism.