...El Maestro Issa El Saieh performing “Choucoune” composed by Michel Mauleart Monton with lyrics from a poem by Oswald Durand. This song is also known as “Ti Zwazo.” It was later translated into the english “Yellow Bird.”
This slow meringue, perhaps more than any other, has been interpreted by most Haitian choirs, orchestras, bands or ensemble. never thought that any single Haitian would doubt that this song is ours, belongs to us and to none other.
However, this tune has become better known with the lyrics of “Yellow Bird” than those of “Choucoune”.If you ask a Jamaican, he will have no hesitation in answering that it is a Jamaican song.
Young Haitian Americans surveyed recently were not sure whether it was a Jamaican song translated in Creole or a Haitian song translated in English. Even the German-Haitian artist Cornelia Schutt, also known as Ti Corn, in her CD “Caribbean Ballads” (1991-Gema), sings Yellow Bird and lists it as “traditional”.
My frustration growing, I went on the internet to look for the name of the composer of “Choucoune”. Both AskJeeves.com and Google had no match for the question. I contacted numerous music stores in an attempt to procure a copy of the scores of the Choucoune. No luck. I went on e-Bay, hoping to be able to buy perhaps an old sheet music, with the scores of “Choucoune”. There again, no luck. I decided therefore to search “Yellow Bird”. On the first try on AskJeeves.com, there it was: Yellow Bird’s music was composed in the 1960s by Norman Luboff and the lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Keith Bergman.
It had become clear to me that we were facing a case of “stolen legacy”, to use an _expression rendered popular by James Richardson, who described how the glorious Egyptian tradition was falsely attributed to the Greeks by the eurocentric scolars. Did this happen because we Haitians fail to study our own history and to teach it to our children?
What is the true story of “Choucoune”?
Believe it or not, Choucoune was a real person. Her real name was Marie Noel Belizaire. She was born in the Village of La-Plaine-du-Nord in the year 1853.
Although her parents are not commonly known, it is reported that Ms.Belizaire had two sisters. Unlike her sisters, she was strikingly beautiful and she was given the nickname of Choucoune. She was dark-skinned, but her long hair was straight, defining the type “marabou”, commonly used in the Haitian vernacular.
Before she could finish her elementary classes, she fell in love with a young man, named Pierre Theodore. The two became involved in a common-law marriage. To support her family, she started a small business, detailing various articles of daily necessity.
Soon however, Choucoune realized that the young man was unfaithful.
She left the village and moved to Cap-Haitien, the capital of the Northern Province of Haiti. She resided at 14, Simon Street (Rue Simon) in the neighborhood of Petite-Guinee. She established a small restaurant near the Chapel of St-Joseph, located on 19th Street (Rue 19).
One of her customers may have been one Oswald Durand, famous poet in those days in Cap-Haitien. He was 13 years older than Choucoune. Nevertheless a romantic relationship was quick to start between the two. They seemed to have enjoyed quite a few blissful moments. Those moments unfortunately were short, because Oswald Durand was a known womanizer and often described himself as “the gardener that waters all the flowers”.
Choucoune was looking for a more stable relationship and moved on.
Shortly thereafter, Oswald Durand was thrown in jail for having criticized some of the political leaders in Cap-Haitien. While sitting in his cell, a bird alit on his window and Durand composed one of the most beautiful Haitian poems, written in Creole. Its title was: Choucoune and the year was 1883.
In it, the poet talks of Choucoune’s beauty, of their happy moments and of the pain of their separation, when Choucoune preferred a young French man over him. Choucoune never returned to Durand, despite the fact that he truly immortalized her. She kept looking for the perfect love that never came. She fell on hard times in the later part of her life and returned to her native village.
She became insane and had to beg for survival.
My mother who as a child, used to go to the celebration of Saint James in La-Plaine-du-Nord told me that people would point to the fallen beauty, whispering : “Here is Choucoune! Look at Choucoune!”
Choucoune died in 1924...
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