Haiti Culture

Haitian culture is the most thoroughly African of any in the Caribbean, because the population was replaced so often that connections to West and Central Africa stayed live rather than fading over generations.

Vodou

Vodou is a complete religion with a cosmology, a priesthood, temples and a liturgical calendar, drawn mainly from Dahomey and Kongo practice and layered over Catholic saints. It has been officially recognised since 2003. Drumming, song and possession are central to its ceremonies, and the visual vocabulary — the vèvè drawn in flour on the ground for each spirit — runs through Haitian art.

Painting and metal

Haitian painting found international attention through the Centre d’Art in the 1940s, and the flat, dense, saturated style associated with it is now one of the recognisable art traditions of the hemisphere. At Croix-des-Bouquets, sculptors flatten oil drums, draw on them in chalk and cut the design out with hammer and chisel, producing work that is sold worldwide and made on one street.

Music

Rara is processional music played on bamboo trumpets in the weeks around Easter, with each band walking a route through its own territory. Compas, the dance music that emerged in the 1950s, is the popular form, and Haitian bands in Miami, Montreal and New York keep it going.

Literature and language

Haitian writers — Jacques Roumain, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, René Depestre, Dany Laferrière, Edwidge Danticat — have a standing in French and in English well beyond the country’s size. Creole became an official language in 1987, and the move to educate in it rather than in French is one of the live cultural arguments.

Carnival

Carnival in February and the separate Jacmel carnival the week before are the largest public events of the year, with papier-mâché masks made in Jacmel that are an art form in themselves.