Recombinant Mythology and the Alchemy of Memory: Occide Jeanty, Ogou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines in Haiti

During the first United States occupation ofHaiti, from 1915 to 1934, Haitian band composer Occide Jeanty wrote compositions for the Haitian Presidential Band that contained culturally encoded critiques of U.S. occupation forces. In his compositions, Jeanty invoked the legend of Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the soldier who led Haiti to independence in 1804 and whose spirit was absorbed into the Vodou religion as a type of Ogou, or warrior spirit, through a process that I term "recombinant mythology," in which people in the present use mythologically oriented language to highlight praiseworthy characteristics of cultural heroes.