Welcome to Makandal’s Frisner Augustin Memorial Archive, an online resource documenting the life and legacy of Master Drummer Frisner Augustin (1948-2012). With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Congress of Santa Barbara, and individual donors like you; and with the help of Collectors who, in a spirit of collaborative generosity, have shared with us their mementos of Director Augustin’s time in Haiti and New York, we have assembled a body of photos, sound and video recordings, and text documents for artists, scholars, activists, and all who work to advance cultural equity. While the Archive preserves the legacy of an individual artist, it also chronicles the turn-of-the-twenty-first-century evolution of a community. Not least, it celebrates a superb and significant art form.
Read a biography of Frisner Augustin on Wikipedia.
Our home page features Tales from the Archive, a storybook created from Archive materials. Enjoy! And please feel free to comment.
Learn how to navigate the Archive’s Metadata, which will point you to its Repository.
You may find rosters of our funders and collectors on the Archive Konbit pages.
To become a Follower of this website and receive notices of new Tales from the Archive entries, click on the button at the top of our righthand sidebar on our Home Page (Tales from the Archive blog).
Featured Image: Photo by Shinji Takehara of Frisner Augustin and Makandal opening a Vodou dance on the stage of Sogetsu Hall, Tokyo, 14 July 2007. From the left, Pat Hall, Huguette France, Marie Charles, Elsie Megie, Smith Destin, Marc Etienne, Morgan Zwerlein, Steve Deats, and Frisner Augustin
The Frisner Augustin Memorial Archive 