played new wave and punk rock music with Caribbean musical style elements. 1985 was a turning point in Morse's life. He was dating a woman whose father strongly disapproved of his daughter dating a musician, and he had a falling out with his fellow band members over musical differences. A conversation with a French record producer persuaded Morse to start over and move to Port-au-Prince to better explore Haitian and Caribbean music. In 1987, he signed a 15-year lease to manage the Hotel Oloffson, then in near ruins and the inspiration for the fictional Hotel Trianon in Graham Greene's famous 1966 novel The Comedians. In restoring the hotel business, Morse hired a local folkloric dance troupe and slowly converted it into a band. Morse and the band began experimenting with the new sounds of rasin music. One of the most important musical movements that swept Haiti in the years following the exile of dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, mizik rasin, or simply rasin, combines elements of traditional Vodou ceremonial and folkloric music with rock and roll. The ancient drum rhythms of former African slaves combined with the beat of American rock and roll was a perfect combination for the musical background of Morse. The Hotel Olofsson was also a perfect venue for rehearsals and performances. When not on tour elsewhere in the country, RAM began playing a regular performance every Thursday night at the hotel. The Junta Years: 1991–1994 Many times during its history, the band has become intimately involved in Haitian politics. During the years of the military junta led by Raoul Cédras from 1991 to 1994, provocative music and art thought to have hidden messages of support for Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his political party, Lavalas, frequently met with persecution from the regime. During Carnival in Port-au-Prince in 1992, RAM was ordered by the regime to perform on the Champs du Mars, a large open park in the center of the city. The regime was determined to have a rasin band playing during Carnival to lend an air of normalcy to the event. Before a crowd of over 10,000 people, the band sang an old folk ballad with the refrain "Kote moun yo? Pa wè moun yo." ("Where are the people? We do not see them.") When they realized the song was a parable about the exiled president-elect Aristide, uniformed soldiers cut off electricity to the stage. The junta hesitated to