This chapter proposes Haitian song and opera as untapped sources for literary analysis and important forerunners in the development of Haitian literature. It demonstrates how the early writers of Haiti used music to challenge the country’s foreign detractors and showcase its artistic achievement, preserving regional vernaculars, offering social commentary, and eloquently heightening the irony of Haiti’s freedom in a world of ‘enlightened’ enslavers. It looks at the contributions of Juste Chanlatte (1766–1828), a prominent Haitian statesman and writer whose many songs and two operas left an indelible mark on early Haitian music and letters. Next, it expounds on the popularity and political expediency of a particular musical-literary genre: the contrafactum. Created by setting original Haitian lyrics to preexisting French melodies, the genre enjoyed a remarkable efflorescence in early Haiti with over one hundred examples published from 1804 to 1820. Through analyses of two musical works by Chanlatte, the chapter shows how early Haitians gave topical relevance to the music of their former French oppressors and literary expression to the ambitions of their nation.

In the three decades from the uprising of the enslaved in Saint-Domingue in 1791 to the recognition of Haitian independence by France in 1825, even amid the bitterest struggles, theatrical productions never fully stopped. When Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed independence, many of the officers surrounding him were directly involved in the theatre, as playwrights, actors, or both. Looking at figures such as Juste Chanlatte, Guy-Joseph Bonnet, Pierre-Charles Lys, Antoine Dupré and Jules Solime Milscent, this chapter makes a case for the importance of the theatre in the early years of Haitian independence as a reflection of the country’s evolving society, but also as a mirror and vector of domestic and international politics. A source of public entertainment and information designed and utilized for the most part by the country’s elites, the theatre was a prime tool in shaping and projecting idealized representations of the new nation and its leaders, within the country and to the outside world.