Voodoo, with its mix of West African mysticism and French Catholicism, plays a vital role in the lives of Haiti's rural poor, but it gets a bad rap elsewhere. For the faithful, the communion of saints and shamans offers even the most piteous peasant his own sliver of paradise. But to outsiders, voodoo only conjures up images of curses, chicken blood and pin-pricked rag dolls.
Voodooists' personal spiritual journeys the religion's name is derived from the Creole words vou ("introspection") and dou ("into the unknown") begin and end with drums. Because they are viewed as conduits to the supernatural, practitioners treat these instruments with intense reverence. During ceremonies, people kiss the ground in front of the drums, which are often treated like members of the family or better by their owners.
It's these drums that veteran producer/sound engineer Peter Wetherbee attempts to capture on Baboon Records' "Synkretizm: A Mountain Thinking the River Fire." Recorded mostly outside Port-au-Prince, Wetherbee who's worked with Bill Laswell and Praxis admits that there is an "absolute shameless use of rock, dance and pop studio techniques" on "Synkretizm." In order to give the recordings the essence and energy they deserve, he used the best microphones and sound gear available, and even took artistic license on the mixing boards by cleaning up and rearranging the raw session material.