The Devil's music

January 2004 should have been early carnival on Haiti, a bravura celebration of the 200th anniversary of independence from France. But instead of fireworks, there was gunfire as rebel soldiers in opposition to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide moved through the countryside of this horribly fated island.

In the capital, Port-au-Prince, the Oloffson Hotel thronged with foreign journalists and officials.

Once a haunt of Graham Greene, Errol Flynn and jetsetters such as Mick and Bianca Jagger, the grand old hotel regains its excitement now on Thursday nights when the house band, RAM, presents voodoo rock. RAM's leader, the hotel's owner, Richard Morse, is a Haitian-American whose mother introduced Haitian voodoo-dance moves to Martha Graham, the pioneer of modern dance.

Morse is a big man with dreamy eyes and long, greying braids woven with blue ribbons. His voodoo-cowboy, punk-rocker outfits pretty well describe his music. Raised in Connecticut, where his father was a professor at Yale, he played guitar in punk band Groceries until, in 1985, he visited Haiti to explore his roots. "Here's the paradox," he chuckles. "Third-generation Haitian, and I only learn to speak Creole at 28; now I'm singing in it!"

Morse met and married a folk dancer, Lunise, who incorporates voodoo gestures and dance steps into RAM's shows.

In Haiti, voodoo is everywhere - if you know what you are looking at. Locals say Haiti is "85 per cent Catholic and 100 per cent voodoo", but people engage at different levels.

Many simply wear the coloured beads of their chosen loa (deity), or have a shrine at home (loas have specific colours, foods and drinks, drum rhythms and dances). Deeper involvement means attending ceremonies at temples and communing with the spirits of ancestors through sacrifice and possession.

RAM gained renown in the late Eighties when director Jonathan Demme used their wonderfully uplifting song, Ibo Lele, in his film Philadelphia. The musical basis is ra-ra, whose bubbling rhythms and dub-like, bassy notes blasted from long, fluted cornets slide through you like smooth rum, and support Lunise's soulful voice, while Morse's twangy, post-punk guitar adds dramatic edge.

RAM reached Britain in 2001, through the enthusiasm of Jan Ryan, director of UK Arts International. On their closing night, in Bath, the band danced off the stage, through the auditorium, and into the street, playing the big African drums and booming, papier-mâšché cornets to summon the Avon gods.

"That tour made Jan realise that people had no clue where Haiti was and they only knew about the negative things - coups, killings, corruption, voodoo dolls, zombies," says Morse. "She wanted to present something positive about Haiti."

Their show, Vodou Nation, emerged earlier this year, when Ryan flew to Haiti to bring together Morse and South African director Brett Bailey, who works in township theatres, and Trinidadian ethnomusicologist Geraldine Connor. They began work the day the rebels took control of Gonaives, a key town in Haiti, and bullets flew as they auditioned 80 young people and organised a rehearsal schedule.

Ryan managed to leave the country as the coup gathered pace and President Aristide was toppled, but Bailey was trapped for two weeks. The footage he shot on his video camera is joined to studio-produced psychedelic imagery to create a remarkable backdrop for the show, which reaches Hackney Empire next Tuesday for a five-night run.