Rasin Okan reclaims Haitian roots music with debut album ‘Jou Ma Lonje’

More than two decades after its founding in Brooklyn, Rasin Sèch band Rasin Okan, released its first album on July 19, “Jou Ma Lonje,” a bold reaffirmation of Haiti’s cultural and spiritual legacy. Driven by traditional Vodou rhythms and lyrical calls for justice, the album reflects the group’s long-standing mission to preserve and reframe Haitian roots music in the diaspora.

For band member and cultural health activist Véronëque Ignace, the project also marks a deep alignment between sound and purpose. 

“[In this album] we’re trying to reframe the way people view Haitian roots music. Rasin Sèch  is often stigmatized, because it’s so closely aligned to Vodou,” Ignace said.

“We want to be able to present the music in its integrity and talk about how really complex it is.”

Rasin Sèch is a form of rasin, or Haitian roots music that uses only percussion and vocals, without guitars or synthesizers. 

Ignace’s work with Kriyol Collective started in 2017, when she invited Rasin Okan musicians to collaborate on health-centered programming that uses the arts as a vehicle for education and healing.

“We are now referred to as an action group, using the arts as a sort of mechanism to raise awareness and create programming… especially for Afro-Caribbean immigrants,” she said. “The musicians that I work with have always been really integral to what Kriyol Collective is able to do and what it does. They are the cultural bearers of those drum traditions and those songs and the dance for Haitian traditional dance. Those three things cannot be separated.”

All the songs on Jou Ma Lonje are original compositions by Jean Montina, known as Maestro or Sanba Mayombe. 

In the rasin tradition, a sanba is a title for someone who uses music to channel stories and the spiritual realm, Ignace explains. 

“A singer, someone who sings well, is not a sanba. You have to have that specific gift. And Montina does.”

The track “Gad Yon Mirak” is particularly emblematic of the album’s call to consciousness. Structured as a medley, the song weaves together stories reflecting the Haitian people’s resistance after the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. 

“He’s basically talking to us about that instant… when the people created their own movement called ‘Bwa Kale,’” Ignace said. 

“It was a resistance movement where they were basically going out and trying to find the people causing havoc.” 

In that uprising, the wooden stick emerged as a symbol of local self‑defense, often carried alongside green leaves, which represented renewal and unity. Together, these elements embodied a community-driven effort to reclaim public safety in the absence of effective policing.

The lyrics also affirm the enduring power of Vodou. “He’s reaffirming a commitment to traditional Haitian culture, as well as Vodou, the practice, the Afro-Indigenous practice from Haiti,” she said. “And saying that essentially until the day he dies and until the Haitians are no longer here, we will always be connected to these traditions.”

Although rasin music has evolved through bands like RAM and Boukman Eksperyans, rasin Okan is one of the few groups still preserving Rasin Sèch.

“For Rasin Okan to be holding on to this for 20 plus years in the diaspora and to be one of the only groups that plays that particular sound, it’s a pretty big deal,” Ignace said. “And I don’t think they get enough credit for it.”

The group will also be featured at Cosamba’s academic conference at Nova Southeastern University in Florida this month, where they will present their work with Kriyol Collective. Cosamba is the Congress of Santa Barbara, a scholarly association focused on Haitian Vodou.

They perform next at the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturday event on Aug. 2 from 5 to 7 p.m.

“There has only been a handful of working bands playing this particular form of pure Mizik Rasin over the past few decades in New York. Rasin Okan is the only ‘band’ I am aware of that is currently performing Rasin Sech in the New York area [with both Haitian drums and vocals],” said Markus Schwartz, a percussionist and mainstay in New York’s Haitian music scene.   

“Having two women upfront who can both sing and dance really increases their presentation and speaks to their importance to the community.”

For Schwartz, the band highlights some of the best of “Haitian Vodou drumming,” a style as complex and culturally important to the Caribbean as classical music in the Western world.

“Rasin Okan is serving to help break down some of the barriers and stereotypes in the community about that style of music that is often looked down upon.”

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