From Oct 9-11, the third edition of Kreol Fest unfolded across MoCADA Cultural Lab II and Haiti Cultural Exchange, bringing together artists and cultural practitioners from across the Creole diaspora. With new support from the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), this year’s festival expanded its reach through a program centered on the diversity of Creole languages, cultures and traditions.
Founded in 2024 by Natie, a Creole curator and musician, Kreol Fest has grown since its inaugural edition at Cafe Erzulie. This year’s three-day festival welcomed participants from across the Caribbean and beyond, including Michel Xavier Biang, the OIF’s permanent observer, to the United Nations.
In remarks at the festival, Biang emphasized the diversity of the broader Francophone and Creole worlds, describing them as spaces shaped by linguistic exchange and cultural encounter.
“Francophone is not a uniform linguistic space,” Biang said. “It brings together countries, territories and communities with diverse cultural and linguistic traditions. It is made of languages that coexist, that meet, and engage in dialogue, and to me, embodies the spirit of Creoleness."
Biang continued by underscoring the role of Creole languages in carrying histories, identities and cultural memory across regions, from the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean to the Pacific. Though these communities have distinct histories and trajectories, he suggested, their languages offer a means of bringing different heritages into dialogue and creating new possibilities.
This year’s theme, Lo Sakré, explored the sacred as a living connection between memory, spirituality, and collective imagination. The festival’s curatorial statement described the sacred not as a boundary, but as “a deep union between the living and the invisible,” inviting artists to consider how spiritual practices and inherited traditions shape the present and inform visions of the future.
Artists from Haiti, New Orleans, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Réunion, Mauritius, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba and elsewhere contributed to a program spanning live performance, visual art, food and language. An open marketplace featuring local businesses and food vendors complemented performances by artists including Harvey J. Leon, Axel Tosca, Madjeen Isaac, Staceyann Chin and more.
The program created space for discussions about the complexities of Creole identity, and its many cultural expressions and histories. At the keynote on Oct. 10, “What Is Creole,” by Dr. Margarita Rosa reflected on the relationship between language, community and spiritual practice.
"To transform religious practices is to develop new relationships between the living and the spiritual world," Rosa said. "Creole people are not the remnants of the world that we lost. We are among the makers of a new world and we have that power to make this world every single day."
Together, the festival’s performances, conversations, and gatherings approached Creole identity not as a singular or fixed inheritance, but as an evolving set of relationships shaped by language, migration, memory and cultural exchange.
For more information about Kreol Fest, visit the festival’s website.
