28444 Benson (reply) RE: 28441: Lally: Question: Tap -Taps (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Legrace Benson <lgbenson@cbs.ucsb.edu>

Corbett adds:


Response to 28441, Lally, LeGrace Benson.
	There is a little paperback on Tap-taps in my library on the other
side of the US. I cannot recall exact title or author. It doesn't turn up on
Google.  There are many photos scattered through books on Haiti.  The
tap-tap décor has changed greatly over the years, as M. Lally is aware, and
it would be interesting to see a book that shows the early ones on up to the
present. Haitian creativity is alive and well over the years on these
vehicles.  One huge goods truck I saw in 1981 had elaborately carved and
polychromed mahogany side panels.  I saw it again as late as 1994. The color
was gone but the carving had held up to the weather and roads.  I am not
sure of this, but I think it ran between Port-au-Prince and Les Cayes.
Since everything in Haiti gets recycled (an admirable trait) those panels
may be somewhere down on "repair road" just up from the port.
My further question:  what was the earliest instance of painted trucks and
busses?

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Corbett adds:

One book is called:  Art on the Road:  Painted Vehicles of the Americas.
	Minneapolis:  Pogo Press, 1988

There is a children's book called TAP-TAP by Karen Lynn Williams.
	New York:  Clarion Books, 1994.

In the journal African Arts, Spring, 1996, Vol. XXIX, issue 2
	there is an article:  Tap-Tap, Fula-Fula, Kai-Kai:
	THE HAITIAN BUS IN ATLANTIC PERSPECTIVE.  By Robert
	Farris Thompson.

And as LeGrace says, photos in many of books on Haiti that feature photos.

Bob Corbett