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The Haitian Music Industry and the Institutional Structure of Music Production. In the mid-1960s, Marc Duverger, a beauty parlor operator in New York City, decided to open a record store in Brooklyn for the Haitian expatriate market. He, like Joe Anson before him and producer Fred Paul and others after him, imported raw musical materials (tracks and mixes) from Haiti for pressing and distribution in the United States and exported them back to Haiti. Duverger remarked on the minuscule size of this market at the time: "It*s too bad at the time there was not much money in Haitian music. Sometimes we sell 500 records, 1,000 records. This was not too many years ago! You could sell maybe 5,000, 6,000, maximum 10,000. The problem is clear: not too many people working in Haiti. I would fly [to Haiti] each time, do my recording, pay the studio, and come home. .
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Duverger
remarked on the minuscule size of this market at the time: "It's too bad at the
time there was not much money in Haitian music. Sometimes we sell 500 records,
1,000 records. This was not too many years ago! You could sell maybe 5,000, 6,000,
maximum 10,000. The problem is clear: not too many people working in Haiti. I
would fly [to Haiti] each time, do my recording, pay the studio, and come home."
The underdevelopment of the Haitian music industry is partly a function of the dependent nature of the economy as a whole within the global political economy, but it also reflects peculiar features of the global political economy, but it also reflects peculiar features of Haitian capitalism. Much Haitian economic activity revolves around the import-export trade and achte-revann (buying goods and reselling them at a slight profit to others who turn around and do the same thing). These practices require minimum investment and produce a quick, if only incremental, return. Haitian music entrepreneurs have downplayed marketing, distribution, resource development, and capital reinvestment in the search for short-term gain. Thus, the political economy of record production was, and still is, dominated by strategies of risk reduction
Musicians complain that producers "don't push the music"
(that they don't pay for sufficient time in the studios to produce a quality product
and that they fail to promote and distribute albums widely). According to trumpeter
Anderson Cameau, "These people, they see the music just like a grocery store business.
They buy this, and they want to sell it and make one dollar or twenty-five cents
on each record and that's it. Let's say we go to a producer, and he tells us he's
going to give us $5,000 to make an album, and he pays for the recording, pressing,
album cover, and put that album out. And after that, he doesn't owe you no money.
Even if you sell 20,000 or one million, he doesn't care about you. Not even a
gift or a pair of shoes!"
In describing his dealings with producer Joe Anson, producer Fred Paul provided a window on the transactions among business people in commercial music:
I had the same customers that Anson had. At the time, Anson was playing tough. With this business, you can*t distribute one record. You need to have a lot of things selling. Otherwise the guys will order from the other guy who has a lot of records, because it's better to make the koupaj [major deal].
So
I was selling Anson the records at let's say at $2, and he was selling me his
at $2.50, but I had no choice...and one day I got to be well, not a gwo neg [big
shot], but I got a little bigger and I came down with a big order, 1,000 records
or so, two or three different numbers, and I told him: "I want to pay for your
records at the same price I sell you mine." He said no. I had already unloaded,
and I loaded back up and I left. An two weeks later, Mrs. Anson called me, and
we made arrangement! It wasn't easy, because I didn't have the money these people
had.
Many of the major producers started out with a store from which they developed their business. There are also many minor producers for whom the store is still the primary business and record production only a sideline. One often finds among store owners/music producers a mentality described by producer Jeff Wainwright as a boutilkyè (shop owner) mentality,
meaning
that they have a boutique, and they make records to barter for other records and
all kinds of other stuff.... You don't have a lot of companies that act like real
labels, paying their bills and promoting
their
artists. Next page