18251: Charles: Article about Frantz Casseus by Marc Ribot (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Philippe Charles <pgcharles@hotmail.com>

http://www.bombsite.com/casseus/casseus.html

Frantz Casseus by Marc Ribot


In 1965, at age 11, I wanted to play guitar: like millions of other suburban
kids, I heard a Rolling Stones record and thought it was cool. I had no
interest in classical guitar. Yet that's what I started studying, with no
less a teacher than Frantz Casseus, the acknowledged father of Haitian
classical guitar. And although I wound up playing music quite far from what
Frantz taught me, it was a good idea, a beautiful idea in fact, for reasons
that don't make any kind of sense but are true.

I'd known Frantz most of my life. He'd been friends with my aunt and uncle,
Rhoda and Melvin Unger, since the early '50s, eventually forming one of
those unlikely reinvented families that seem to grow out of the social
fragments of New York life. My aunt and uncle both attended the famously
leftist City College of the 1930s, met shortly thereafter and have been
together ever since. By the time they met Frantz, my aunt had become a pop
songwriter and my uncle was running a costume jewelry business in the
Garment District.

Frantz was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1915. His childhood fascination
with the guitar was mystically fused with the death of a young aunt who had
helped raise him. It was the custom in Haiti to discard the belongings of
those who died from illness. "The sight of [Aunt Andree's] mandolin perched
on what seemed a pile of garbage—alongside the memory of her music—has never
ceased to haunt me . . . I burned with desire." (Marc Methalier, ed., "Essai
Bibliographique sur la Vie de Frantz Casseus," Mathel Productions, 1995) By
the time he emigrated to New York, Frantz had already established himself as
an important guitarist in Port-au-Prince cultural circles. But he had
ambitions beyond the repetition of a traditional classical repertoire for
Haiti's cultural elite.

Frantz came to New York for roughly the same reasons James Baldwin left it.
Both needed to write about the place they were from and both needed to leave
that place in order to do so. Frantz came here with the ambition to compose
a distinctly Haitian classical guitar music, to fuse the European classical
tradition with Haitian folk elements as Heitor Villa-Lobos had done with his
native Brazil's and as Béla Bartók had done with Hungarian folk songs.

Frantz's assumption of what was to be a lifelong musical mission followed
the occupation of Haiti by the U.S. military (1915–34), when its cultural
integrity must have felt threatened. An editorial he wrote titled "Our
Méringue Is Dying" describes this: "Some with indifference, others with an
indignant sadness, have witnessed the disappearance of one of our most
delicious national dances which is like a precious pearl ornament of our
folklore." The Haitian Méringue "invites [one] to dance, contains a subtle
and delicious melody. . . . [Its] character, its simple and limited form,
made it a dance with noble stature, and even a classic." (Frantz Casseus,
"Notre Méringue se muert,"Haiti Journal, 1944) Love and loss again, this
time on a national/cultural level.

Frantz's artistic reaction to this perceived loss, his "indignant sadness,"
occurred against a backdrop in which Haitian classical guitar repertoire was
completely determined by what was being performed in Europe. Frantz looked
instead to Haitian folk forms: "I believe it is the artist's function to
render articulately and with beauty the soul of the land of his origin and
also the world that he experiences. . . . As you may know, my work is
considered an expression of the Haitian spirit. Yet, critics have stated
(and this has been my hope) that it transcends regionalism and enters the
realm of transnational art." (Interview with Ira Landgarten, Frets Magazine
#17, 1989)

This leap of imagination may seem obvious from a contemporary standpoint,
but in the Haiti of the late '30s and early '40s it was anything but. Aimé
Césaire was only just articulating the Negritude Movement. To imagine a
fusion of the European classical tradition and Haitian folk music, to
imagine the "Haitian spirit" as relevant and necessary to "the realm of
transnational art," was bold and shocking.

Before Frantz could incorporate Haitian folklore into the tradition of the
classical guitar, he first had to study it. As the relatively protected son
of a civil servant (his father headed the Department of Water Supply),
Frantz had had limited direct experience of Haitian folk culture. He dropped
out of law school in order to become a full-time guitarist. He then set out
to make contacts "with certain griots and people initiated in our culture.
Thus strengthened, I overflowed with rhythms, forms, lyrics of my future
compositions."

Frantz's relation with the U.S. occupiers was complex. He'd heard jazz on
the soldiers' radios and phonographs. Although his sense of musical mission
emerged from a desire to protect Haitian music from this cultural intrusion,
he was also attracted to jazz. Frantz told me he came to New York to meet
Fats Waller. The meeting never took place; Waller died within a year of
Frantz's arrival in 1946. But the influence is audible in Frantz's stride
piano/jazz harmony—inflected composition "Romance" and was visible in his
appreciation of well-made hats. Frantz initially stayed at the Sloan YMCA
and various Upper West Side addresses before settling at 312 West 87th
Street, where he completed Haitian Suite, the masterpiece he recorded in
1954 for Folkways Records (whose catalog has been reissued by Smithsonian).

In time, Frantz and my uncle and aunt became friends, hung out and
eventually had a sort of cooperative arrangement regarding a car. As a kid,
I used to come in from New Jersey with my family to visit my aunt and uncle
on West 86th Street. Frantz would be there, and we'd spend Saturday or
Sunday together. Every Thanksgiving and Passover, Frantz would be with us,
whether in New Jersey or New York. Sometimes he'd bring his guitar and play.
He was the first person I ever heard play a musical instrument live. When I
decided to study guitar, it was decided that I would study with him.

I would arrive for my lessons at Frantz's brownstone every Sunday afternoon
at one. Often, to my amazement, Frantz would still be sleeping. The
apartment smelled of black coffee, stained wood and cigarettes. The place
resembled an assemblage inspired by Cubist painting. Frantz was a skilled
woodworker and luthier—during his life, he hand made more than 150 guitars
to supplement his income. Every week would bring some alteration to the maze
of cabinets and bookshelves.

While Frantz got dressed, I'd sit and warm up on the guitar. I could see, on
the coffee table, artifacts of the night before: manuscript paper, pencils
and the ashes of entire cigarettes, 10 or more, maybe puffed once or twice
then left in the ashtray to burn out untouched and forgotten. The story of
someone composing, someone lost in the solitude of music.

Frantz was a patient teacher, and in fact, much of what is taught in the
study of classical guitar is patience itself. The counterintuitive ability
to relax the hands instead of tensing them before the difficult task of
playing, the secret that impossible physical feats become possible if broken
up into tiny components and approached very, very slowly.

  I stopped studying with Frantz at age 14 and started playing in rock
bands. I moved to Boston, then to Maine. Somewhere along the line, I became
a musician. I moved to New York in 1977, crashed in my aunt and uncle's
spare bedroom for a few months, then moved downtown and lived my life.

What did Frantz do? To quote from the upcoming Tuscany Publications book of
Frantz's works for solo guitar: "In the late '60s Casseus began to compose
again for voice and guitar, publishing the album Haitienesques. In 1969, he
released the recording Haitiana on the Afro-Carib label (now available on CD
through Smithsonian Folkways as Haitian Dances, Haitian Suite).

"Although Casseus continued to compose through the 1980s, his career as a
performing guitarist was hampered from 1970 onward by an increasingly
debilitating tendon problem in his left hand. This eventually forced a
premature retirement from concertizing, which, combined with the
unavailability of his recordings, contributed to a loss of Casseus's
visibility on the U.S. classical guitar scene. Afro-Carib had gone out of
business and Folkways was highly disorganized in its later years."

I noticed Frantz's increasing difficulties only gradually, from the distance
I'd placed between my family and myself. At that time, I felt my studies
with Frantz had been at best a quaint diversion from the electric path my
music had taken. At worst, I cursed the frustrating right-hand slowness of
execution resulting from my failed 15-year attempt to play electric guitar
classical style, without a pick. It was only beginning to dawn on me that
the economy forced on me by that slowness had been my aesthetic salvation,
the frustration itself a connection to a frustrated no-wave musical moment.

I was plucked from my self-absorption by a phone call from Rhoda: Frantz was
in trouble. For years, he'd been in a state of denial about the increasing
clumsiness of his left hand. Current medical expertise would most likely
have recommended a respite from playing. At the time, Frantz thought that he
just needed to practice more. But the more he practiced, the clumsier he
got, till he could hardly play at all. He believed, had to believe, that he
was making progress. Eventually his delusion collided with the world: Frantz
accepted a concert engagement in honor of his contributions to Haitian
culture from the Societé de Recherche et de Diffusion de la Musique
Haitienne in Montreal.

My aunt's plan, seemingly stolen from one of the musical comedy scripts
she'd pitched (and sold) to Broadway producers, was for me to act as the
unofficial understudy in case things went badly. I'd already learned some of
Frantz's pieces as his student; I started practicing the rest. Frantz took
off for Montreal about five days before the concert. On day three, Rhoda,
who had somehow made herself available to the concert promoters, began to
receive calls of increasing urgency. I got on a plane to Montreal and stayed
up most of that night with Frantz correcting my interpretation of his
pieces. The next evening, after having survived an early-morning audition
before representatives of the Societé, I played Frantz's repertoire in
concert.

It wasn't a brilliant concert—classical guitarist is one of those jobs, like
professional football linebacker, in which one doesn't dabble—but it was
okay. My relief was tempered with regret; it wasn't quite right that by
default I had wound up as Frantz's main interpreter. And I was concerned
over what Frantz must actually be feeling as he accepted the audience's
applause.

    Back in New York, Frantz's tendon problems, in spite (or because) of an
operation on his wrist and other medical interventions, didn't improve.
Another composer might have shifted to piano as a tool and continued
writing. But Frantz's attachment to music was through the guitar. "Of all
musical instruments, classical guitar is closest to the human voice," Frantz
liked to say. In no way, of course, is this objectively true, but it was
true for Frantz; it was his human voice.

There was another source of discouragement: he wasn't receiving much income
from what he'd written. The work was generating income: his vocal version of
"Merci Bon Dieu," one of the Haitian Suite pieces, had been recorded by
Harry Belafonte, French vocalist Gilles Dreux and others. But Frantz was the
victim of a classic music-biz malaise. He had, over the course of his
career, signed publishing deals with various companies that had been sold
and resold. My mother, Harriet Ribot, had offered to help Frantz untangle
this knot in order to both generate income for him and clear the rights to
publish Frantz's work in book form. The process took over a decade. My
mother's persistent inquiries uncovered one old account of over nine
thousand dollars, ostensibly never paid because the publishers were unable
to reach him—though Frantz hadn't moved in 30 years and was listed in the
phone book. Publishing royalties aren't just a prize for a composer, they're
a sign that someone out there is listening, a note of encouragement from the
world. Would Frantz have written more in a fairer world? Looking at the
decades-late check, Frantz told my aunt, "I had thought my contribution was
without value."

By that time, the point was moot. A series of strokes and heart attacks left
Frantz increasingly debilitated during his last years. We were in close
touch during that time—Frantz supervised my recording of his solo guitar
pieces for the Disques du Crépuscule label from his 87th Street nursing-home
bed. Although paralyzed in half his body and often finding it difficult to
form words, Frantz was mentally alert and able to make insightful critiques
of the work. During this period Frantz was visited by friends, family and
well-wishers from the Haitian cultural scene, where his status as a major
composer is well established. In 1992 he was honored as "a living testimony
of Haitian cultural survival with authenticity" by the Recreational,
Artistic and Literary Haitian Club of New York. In Haiti itself, bootlegs of
Frantz's recordings are still circulated.

Frantz Casseus did what he'd set out from Haiti to do. In order to do it, he
chose a life of great solitude, imposed on himself a type of exile,
forfeited (although he was by no means celibate) the pleasures of a wife and
children, spent his life on the edge of poverty, and lived as a black man in
a United States whose southern racists wouldn't let him stay in the hotels
where he performed and whose northern liberals had difficulty accepting his
work as classical, preferring to hear it within a "folk" context when they
heard it at all. He carried these burdens with such little complaint they
seemed not to matter. Those who knew Frantz knew better. But Frantz chose
this life because he loved composing, he loved playing the classical guitar.
Love's burdens are lightly borne. Frantz died in June 1993. Before he did,
my aunt, my mother and I promised him that we'd look after his work. The
first print book of Frantz Casseus's complete works for solo classical
guitar will be released this spring by Tuscany Publications.

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