RAM

rasin

RAM is the rasin band that made Hotel Oloffson one of Port-au-Prince music's mythic sites. Richard A. Morse arrived in Haiti in the mid-1980s looking for rhythms connected to the heritage of his mother, Emerante de Pradines, then took over the Oloffson before forming RAM in 1990. Lunise Morse, coming from folkloric dance and traditional performance, became the group's central voice and presence.

RAM places Vodou rhythms, ceremonial songs, vaksen horns, drums, guitar, bass, brass, and rock energy into a form that does not turn roots into decoration; it lets the ceremony breathe inside the music. That places the band inside the mizik rasin movement that gained force after Duvalier, alongside other projects trying to bring traditional power into public, political, and international music spaces.

'Fèy' became one of the most loaded songs of the 1990s because it could be heard as prayer, political metaphor, and resistance song. The official versions of 'Papa Simbi' at Hotel Oloffson and 'Fèy' live in Cabaret make the RAM experience more concrete: these songs are not only recordings, but ritual and performance moments. The Oloffson Thursday nights became a crossing point for musicians, dancers, tourists, locals, Vodou practitioners, journalists, and diaspora visitors.

In November 2024, Richard Morse announced that he was leaving RAM and that the band no longer existed; in July 2025, Hotel Oloffson was burned in gang violence, making the end of the era even heavier. RAM remains essential because it shows how mysticism, politics, drums, and Port-au-Prince night could enter one sound that never feared presenting itself as Haitian before the world.

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