My paper for this conference explores the ways in which the archive of Vodou song references and engages with the experience of Haitian independence. The two videos below provide some examples. In the first, an interview done in November 2012 by Duke students Claire Payton and Eric Barstow as part of the Vodou Archive project, the head of the Lakou Badjo recounts the story of its founding and its links with Dessalines’ role in the war of independence.

In the second video, filmed at the Duke Haiti Laboratory in February 2011, singer and Vodou oungan Erol Josué performs the song “Depi M Soti Ginen,” which offers a powerful narrative of the experience of exile, resistance, and cultural formation in Haiti.