Join us for the opening night of Rasin San Bout | Roots Without End: Artists in Dialogue with Sounds of Haiti from the Alan Lomax Archive.

This opening night reception will feature a dynamic An n Pale between several exhibition artists and Dr. Gage Averill, a renowned ethnomusicologist and curator of Alan Lomax in Haiti, 1936-37, a Grammy Nominated box set of Lomax’s recordings, films, and writings from his time in Haiti.

Saturday, September 19, 2026
6–9pm
Haiti Cultural Exchange
35 Lafayette Ave. Brooklyn, NY

—
About Gage Averill

Gage Averill (Ph.D. University of Washington, 1989) is the Provost and Vice President Academic at the University of British Columbia and was formerly UBC’s Dean of Arts. He was Vice-Principal Academic University of Toronto Mississauga) and formerly Dean of Music at the University of Toronto, and before that Chair of Music at NYU.

He is an ethnomusicologist specializing in popular music of the Caribbean and North American vernacular music.  Prof. Averill served as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology between 2009-2011. His book on barbershop singing (Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony, Oxford 2003) won best book prizes from the Society for Ethnomusicology (Merriam Prize) and the Society for American Music; his book on Haitian popular music and power (A Day for the Hunter: A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti, Chicago 1997) was awarded the best book prize in ethnic and folk research by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections; and the 10-CD boxed set of music and film he curated, along with an accompanying book, called Alan Lomax in Haiti, 1936-37, received two Grammy Nominations.

He has consulted for the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Smithsonian, OAS, Fulbright, and for films, festivals, and copyright cases. For fun he kayaks, bikes, writes/performs music, and works on construction projects.

—
About the Exhibition

We are excited to announce our forthcoming exhibition in collaboration with the Archive of Alan Lomax (1915-2002), a pioneering ethnomusicologist for over six decades. From 1936-1937, at the urging of heralded African American anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston, Lomax traveled to Haiti to record the nation’s music and rituals on behalf of the US Library of Congress.

The Association for Cultural Equity, which stewards Lomax’s archive, selected 40 essential recordings from the nearly 50 hours of recorded sound from Haiti, Building a conversation between the past and present, HCX invited visual artists of Haitian descent to respond and connect their own work through an Open Call. 

From textiles to film, the artists selected evoke both personal and resonant responses to the recordings that most spoke to them — from lullabies to Rara, from the sacred to the Konbit. The exhibition will feature curated pairings of recordings and artwork, connecting their modes of communion and communication over time and place.

Curated by Régine M. Roumain and Micaela Walker
On view from September 19 through October 18.

—
Featured Artists

Laïssa Alexis
Love Aritus
Marie Casimir
Megan Delianne
Stephanie “Philomen” Dorceant
Jennica Drice
Sydney Rose Maubert
Christopher Mitchell
Marie Guilloto Stuppard
Zarita Zevallos

—

Learn more about the exhibition and artists here » 
Join the artists & curators for other activations taking place as part of this exhibition »