The Living Need Light, the Dead Need Music is a cross-cultural ode to death that grafts the celebratory musical and funerary traditions and rituals of southern Vietnam to those of the southern United States. Originally commissioned for the Prospect 3 arts festival in New Orleans, it conjures a spatial confluence of the Mekong River and the Mississippi Delta, places that are similarly grounded in swampy landscapes and processional music traditions. It combines the documentation of actual rituals with staged performances in a joyous and poignant celebration of death that moves fluidly from the city to the country while charting the central character’s transition from gendered body to androgynous spirit.By operating in the slippages between conceptions of self and other, real and imaginary sites, the film closes the distance between the two and allows for otherwise distinct locales and cultures and their respective funerary traditions to meld into one rousing parade through the Global South.