yon ti vizit (21:21)
It’s July, 2019 in Matènwa, a small village on the island of La Gonâve, Haiti, and Elizabeth Chin and I are hanging out at our friend Anetude “Zaza” Geffrard’s house while we wait for a party to start. This party involves local voudou drummers so I’m carrying my field recorder in the hopes of recording some of their performance later. As we wait Zaza asks us if we want to see her Grandfather’s house, an older structure covered in cobwebs tucked behind hers that we didn’t know was there. We walk over with her daughter (Rosalinda) and infant son (Billy Graham, crying at the beginning of the recording) and enter the two room house through a thin, wooden door. Once inside, and after the kids have been shooed away, Zaza says she wants to show us her altar and begins praying in front of it. Shortly thereafter a spirit (Ogou Feray) comes to her and we have a little visit (yon ti vizit).
100% of the proceeds from this album will go to the Billy Edmond College Fund.
Voices (in approximate order of appearance): Billy Graham Edmond, Elizabeth Chin, Anetude “Zaza” Geffrard, Ogou Feray, Casey Anderson
Recorded July, 2019 in Matènwa, La Gonâve, Haiti by Casey Anderson
Mastered May, 2020 in Los Angeles, CA by Justin Asher for Mnemonic Recordings
Design by Steven Ziadie
Image of St George from the Nuremburg Chronicle Illustrated by Michel Wolgemut & Wihelm Pleydenwurff
Image of Der Schmidt by Jost Amman
Elizabeth Chin is an anthropologist and ethnographer with a varied practice that includes performative scholarship, collaborative research, vernacular electronics, and experimental writing. Her work interrogates race and racism with fieldwork in the US and in Haiti. Currently she is Editor in Chief of American Anthropologist.
Casey Anderson (they / them) is designing and repurposing technologies to activate participatory practice, primarily involving explorations of sound, in diverse cultures and communities. Performances, exhibitions, and residencies include MOCA - Los Angeles (CA), ISSUE Project Room (NY), STEIM (NL), Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), Mass MOCA (MA), The Walker Art Center (MN), and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (CA). Over the last two decades they have lead numerous initiatives at the intersection of arts programming and community organization, including hybrid web-journal/festivals (the Experimental Music Yearbook, with John P. Hastings and Scott Cazan), as well as community arts centers/venues like Trade School (with Arden Stern), the wulf., BETALEVEL, and Machine Project. As an educator they have taught at ArtCenter College of Design and UCLA. They currently live in Los Angeles, California, own and operate the organizational initiative a wave, and teach at KAOS Network