Emerante de Pradines: The Birth of a Legend and the Making of a Tradition

Abstract

From 2012 to 2016, spent each July at the fabled Hotel Oloffson Portau-Prince, where often sat and conversed with Madame Emerante de Pradines Morse (Emy), developing a friendship. Emy is the mother of Richard Morse, who with his wife, Lunise, fronts the popular Haitian roots band RAM and manages the Gothic gingerbread hotel. Emerante was born on September 24, 1918, to a mother of Haitian and Spanish descent and to a polio-stricken French father who had moved to Haiti with his family at the age of nine and became one of the country's most beloved singers-Ti Candio.To know Emy is to enter a kaleidoscopic world of Haitian history, performing arts, New World postcolonialism, the supernatural, Vodou, and the formation of the Haitian folkloric music and dance tradition. With each summer that passed, Emy told me more stories, and regretted recording them. So this year decided to sit down with Emy and interview ninety-eight years old, she never ceases to amaze me with her mental acuity, although couldn't help wishing had done this type of interview earlier, when perhaps it wouldn't have been as much of an effort for her to plug in (as Emy refers to harnessing her powers). In the cool shade of her sprawling home perched on a mountainside above Port-au-Prince, we talked about her childhood and young adulthood, and how she played the pioneering role, her own words, of bringing to Port-au-Prince.1Emerante was one of eight surviving children born to her parents; she was the eldest girl the family, second line after her older brother and following four other children who had died prematurely. Describing her mother as a very religious woman who disliked leaving the house, Emy tells the story of how her mother implored Notre Dame of Mount Carmel to give her a child, a girl, promising that return she would devote this child to the virgin saint. Not unlike the birth ofJesus, Emy's own birth purportedly occurred a mystical way. birth happened very strangely. Instead of being at the doctor or the midwife, [my mother] was on vacation at Riviere Froid. She went to the bucket to urinate and got out. just dropped out. She screamed. Someone from the yard came in, put her to bed, took me and cut the umbilical cord, and took me out to bathe recounts Emy. Throughout Emy's childhood, her mother told her the story of this day, saying that the midwife prophesied, This one will be something because of the way of her birth.From an early age, Emy began to have experiences with the occult, experiences that she did fully understand until a later age. At age seven, a strange thing happened to me. In Haiti, there is always a guy on a corner somewhere breaking stone, from a big stone into a little [piece of] gravel, for people to build houses. A little chip of stone flew away and hit me on the head. screamed, and [then] saw a vision of a man with a top hat. He put his finger over his mouth. He passed his hand, wiped the blood, and disappeared. That was a visit of a spirit, says Emy. While her mother thought she was crazy and her father told her not to dream for him, Emy says, Vodou started to show me. would tell them exactly what was going to happen and it would happen.Meanwhile, it was also from a young age that Emy's artistic inclinations and talents were being nurtured by both of her parents. Her mother taught her to recite poetry: I was introduced to the arts by my mother, who was an introverted person who couldn't put herself into action. Since she had me, she probably noticed was talented and she focused on me and pushed me. think used to amuse her and entertain her. And her father, Ti Candio, who composed up to five new songs a week and traveled throughout Haiti to perform for adoring fans, taught her to sing. first teacher of voice was my father. My knowledge of knowing how to sing-to please a public-that came from my father. …