Frisner Augustin () (March 1, 1948 – February 28, 2012) was a major performer and composer of Haitian Vodou drumming, and the first citizen of Haiti to win a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, where he resided for forty years.
A youth prodigy on the traditional drums of Haitian Vodou in ritual context, Augustin took his genre to the modern stage, often exploring its common roots with various jazz styles. From his initial forays in Haiti with Lina Mathon-Blanchet, Jacky Duroseau, and Jazz des Jeunes, he went on to work in the United States and Europe with Kip Hanrahan, Edy Brisseaux, and Andrew Cyrille. He also recorded for the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme.
Augustin led his own ensemble, La Troupe Makandal, from 1981 until his death. He used the group not only to make music but also to change popular misconceptions in the public mind regarding Haitian Vodou, a poorly understood but richly developed Afro-Haitian spiritual discipline.
Early life in Haiti Augustin was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 1, 1948."Frisner Augustin, Haitian Vodou Drummer, Dies at 63", The New York Times, March 10, 2012.Lois Wilcken, The Drums of Vodou (Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company, 1992), 12. His mother, a poor retailer named Andrea Laguerre, gave birth to Frisner, her first child, under a tree outside the city's General Hospital while waiting for a room that never became available. Andrea took her son to the dirt-floor shack that was their home in the capital's Portail Léogane district, specifically, a community called "behind the cemetery" because of its location along the west side of the major burial ground at the south end of the city.James Ridgeway and Jean-Jean Pierre. 1998-99. "Haitian Drums Call from Port-au-Prince to Brooklyn". Natural History, Volume 107, Number 10 (December - January), p. 30. The child's father, a carpenter named Julien Augustin, left their home not long after the birth of his second child, a girl. Growing up without the presence of a father in the home, the boy decided it was up to him to support his mother and sister. Since the family had no means to put him in school, and since his passion was music, he began to follow in the footsteps of his uncle Catelus Laguerre, a drummer in the oral tradition, at the age of seven.Carol Amoruso, "Frisner Augustin, Vodou Ambassador: A Master Spell Caster Drums the Spirits In". RhythmMusic Magazine, Vol. V, No. 12 (December/January 1998), p. 20. He earned the nickname Ti Kelep (Tee Kay-lep), which means "Little Kelep", the second word referring to a pattern unique to the third drum of the Vodou ensemble. By the time Augustin had reached his early teens, the Vodou houses of his community had recognized his genius for drumming, and one house initiated him as its ountògi (oo-taw-gee; sacred drummer).Lois Wilcken, The Drums of Vodou (Tempe, AZ: White Cliffs Media Company, 1992), 111.
Julien Augustin returned to the family and placed his now adolescent son in a welding school at about the same time that André Germain, a director of Haiti's La Troupe Folklorique Nationale (National Dance Troupe), discovered him playing at a Vodou ceremony just outside Port-au-Prince. To his father's consternation, Augustin dropped out of the welding school when Germain introduced him to Lina Mathon Blanchet,Transcript 20110312 (Rebecca Dirksen); interview with Frisner Augustin, March 12, 2011; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. a classical pianist who had organized Haiti Chante et Danse (Haiti Sings and Dances), one of the country's first companies performing folklore,Lavinia Williams Yarborough, Haiti-Dance (Frankfurt am Main: Brönners Druckerei, 1959), 3. a word used in Haiti to denote both traditional culture and a genre that represents traditional culture on the modern stage.Lois Wilcken, "Music Folklore among Haitians in New York: Staged Representations and the Negotiation of Identity" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1991), p. 5. Blanchet also taught piano and guided the career of Jacky Duroseau, who went on to develop a unique style of Vodou jazz. Augustin soon found work with a small jazz combo featuring Duroseau, with Haiti Chante et Danse, and later with the folklore companies of African-American dancer Lavinia Williams and Haitian dance professor and choreographer Viviane Gauthier. While continuing to play in Vodou temples and in a Mardi Gras band of his own creation, he entertained tourists in theaters and hotels, inside and outside Haiti.
In 1972, one year into the tenure of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, Augustin accepted an engagement in New York with Jazz des Jeunes, the orchestra that accompanied La Troupe Folklorique Nationale.Lavinia Williams Yarborough, Haiti-Dance (Frankfurt am Main: Brönners Druckerei, 1959), 7. Like all other members of the company, he used the opportunity to emigrate from Haiti and settle in the burgeoning Haitian diaspora of New York City.
Life and work in the United States and abroad Soon after his emigration to New York City in 1972, Augustin re-connected with childhood friend Oungan Emmanuel Cadet, who had established a Vodou society in the Bronx. In October 1973 Cadet performed a spiritual marriage between Augustin and Èzili Freda Dawomen,Unpublished document 19731021 (Gros Roche Beau Hougan, priest); certificate of Vodou marriage with Èzili Freda Dawomen, October 21, 1973; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. a Vodou spirit with roots in West Africa who represents romantic love.Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Kingston, NY: McPherson & Company, 1983), 137-45.Leslie G. Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 131-45. Such a marriage, according to Vodou practitioners, brings prosperity to the human partner in exchange for special devotion.Alfred Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, translated by Hugo Charteris (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 212-15.
Dancers and choreographers who had played with companies in Port-au-Prince since the 1940s were leaving Haiti during the 1960s and '70s and re-forming in New York.Lois Wilcken, "Music Folklore among Haitians in New York: Staged Representations and the Negotiation of Identity" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1991), pp. 177-95. Augustin found work drumming for Jean-Léon Destiné, Louinès Louinis, Troupe Shango of Arnold Elie, and the Ibo Dancers of Paulette St. Lot; however, throughout the 1970s, he aspired to leadership of his own group even though dancers typically led folklore companies. In 1981 La Troupe Makandal, a company established in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Upper Belair and named after the eighteenth-century revolutionary and messiah François Makandal, arrived in New York and sought Augustin out for help in establishing itself in the diaspora.Lois Wilcken, "Music Folklore among Haitians in New York: Staged Representations and the Negotiation of Identity" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1991), pp. 202-203. He took the group under his wing and introduced it to the Haitian community in a Thanksgiving festival at Brooklyn College.Lois Wilcken, "The Changing Hats of Haitian Staged Folklore in New York", Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken, eds., Island Sounds in the Global City, Caribbean Popular Music and Identity in New York (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 175. The company immediately and thereafter distinguished itself for its raw authenticity and bold presentation of the sacred gesture.Anonymous, "Ansy Derose à New York," La Nouvelle Haiti Tribune, 2/9 (June 2, 1982), p. 16.Robert Palmer, "Stage: Voodoo Rituals", New York Times, May 25, 1983, n.p.Susanna Sloat, "La Troupe Makandal—February 4, 1998", Attitude, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp. 32, 34. Together with his drumming student, musicologist Lois Wilcken, Augustin established the company as a not-for-profit organization incorporated in New York State.Unpublished document 19840207 (New York State Department of State); Certificate of Incorporation, February 7, 1984; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY.
Directing his own company gave Augustin the opportunity to develop a particular style of Vodou drumming and to train an ensemble in his own manner. He and the company soon attracted the attention of entrepreneurs, particularly with staged representations of Vodou rites that aimed to re-educate the public about Vodou and Haiti itself. Throughout his performing and teaching career, he continued to drum for Vodou houses both in and out of New York.McLane, Daisann, "Dead Heads, Saturday Night Voodoo in Brooklyn", Village Voice, November 27, 1990, 63. In his own analysis, he placed greatest value on drumming directly for the spirits in a consecrated space.Dr. Loïs Wilcken, "Frisner Augustin: 'Ountògi'", Voices from Haïti.
Recognition arrived in 1998 when the cultural center City Lore inducted Augustin into its People's Hall of Fame.Chrisena Coleman, "Awards for Guardians of New York City Spirit". Daily News, November 19, 1998, n.p.Award No. 19981119 (City Lore); People's Hall of Fame, November 19, 1998; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. Filmmaker Jonathan Demme, whose film Beloved included Makandal on its soundtrack,La Troupe Makandal, performance of traditional Haitian Rara music on Beloved, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, epic/Sony Music Sountrax EK 69656, compact disc. presented the award and dubbed Augustin "the Arnold Schwarzenegger of transcendental music". One year later the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded him its National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor the United States confers in folk and traditional arts.Lawrence Van Gelder, Lawrence. "Footlights". New York Times, May 27, 1999, p. E1.Award No. 19990928 (National Endowment for the Arts); National Heritage Fellowship, September 28, 1999; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. He was the first Haitian artist to earn this distinction. A Certificate of Achievement from the National Coalition for Haitian RightsAward No. 19991105 (National Coalition for Haitian Rights); Certificate of Achievement, November 5, 1999; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. followed on the heels of the NEA award; Tonèl Lakay, a children's troupe, gave him a plaque of honor;Harold Jean-Gilles, "Tonèl Lakay honore le tambourineur Fritzner Augustin", Haïti Observateur, 8–15 March 2001, p. 21. and in 2011 dancer/choreographer Peniel Guerrier paid tribute to Augustin with his annual Kriye Bòdè award.Tequila Minsky, "History of Haiti thru Drums and Dance", Caribbean Life, June 8–14, 2011, p. 22.Award No. 20110521 (Peniel Guerrier and Kriye Bòde); Certificate of Appreciation, May 21, 2011; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. Augustin's company, La Troupe Makandal, has received awards from New York's Caribbean Cultural CenterAward No. 19891010 (Caribbean Cultural Center); The Annual African Diaspora in the Americas Award, October 10, 1989; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY. and from the Haitian Studies Association.Award No. 20121110 (Haitian Studies Association); Award for Service, November 10, 2012; Makandal Archive , Brooklyn, NY.
Later life