Rara

Rara is the processional festival music of Haiti, performed by costumed bands that parade through towns and countryside during Lent, from Carnival to Easter week. Its sound is built on the vaksin, long bamboo trumpets each sounding a single note and combined in interlocking hocket melodies, reinforced by drums, metal horns, bells, rattles and massed singing. Organised by societies with kings, queens and baton-spinning majors, rara bands carry Vodou devotion, satire and political protest into the street, and rival bands compete for territory and prestige.