- FileThe excitement of the region's culture will be on show at CARIFESTA.
Rickey Singh, Contributor
OVER 10 days next month, the Caribbean's premier cultural festival, CARIFESTA, will take place in St. Kitts and Nevis - the smallest country ever to host such an extravaganza, and arrangements for hosting the festival are well advanced.
Spanning a cultural history from slavery and colonialism to our post-Independence ways of life in the scattered islands and mainland countries of the region, a CARIFESTA usually brings together the best in the performing and creative arts that the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, culturally diverse Caribbean has to offer.
Launched on a grand scale in 1972 in Guyana, the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) has since been hosted in Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago. But escalating costs, running into millions of dollars, forced the region's Governments to consider various alternatives without giving up on a commitment to keep the festival alive, conscious of its tremendous contribution in uniting the 'Caribbean family'.
Having considered and then deferred the idea of a series of mini-regional cultural festivals, instead of one grand CARIFESTA, the Governments and their cultural experts came up with plans to downscale the extent and level of participation, but to retain the essential features of the festival. With that in mind, St. Kitts and Nevis, an Eastern Caribbean island of 104 square miles and some 43, 000 people, requested and secured the honour to host the seventh CARIFESTA that takes place from August 17-26 at a cost of about EC$7 million.
"While ours is the smallest country to host a CARIFESTA, it remains a truly regional effort and we intend to make it most successful, giving fresh meaning to this unique encounter of the diverse expressions of Caribbean culture," said St. Kitts and Nevis Culture Minister, Jacinth Henry-Martin, a few days ago.
Assistance in various forms is being provided by a range of the participating countries, among them Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana from within CARICOM, and also Cuba and Venezuela.
And the host country is determined, in the words of its Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, to prove "that smallness is no barrier to the attainment of outstanding success in hosting, with the co-operation of our Caribbean partners, this culturally unique event."
The concept of a CARIFESTA, as originally hosted in Guyana in 1972 by then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham's Government, was itself long preceded way back in 1952 when, according to Rex Nettleford, the first-ever Caribbean Festival of Arts was held in Puerto Rico with participation from Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago.
A Caribbean-wide festival of arts, as CARIFESTA has expanded to be, had resulted from a Caribbean Writers and Artists Conference hosted by Guyana at the time of its political Independence in May 1966. And by the time of the second CARIFESTA in Jamaica some four years later, the inspiration of strong common cultural roots was being manifested in successive CARIFESTAS, with perhaps the biggest-ever hosted by Cuba that continued to assist, right up to next month's seventh festival in St. Kitts and Nevis, in the staging of other CARIFESTAS.
With every CARIFESTA the peoples of the region come to realise that for all our divisions, we have more to celebrate in our 'oneness' than what separates us. It is an occasion for the celebration of our diversity. As Professor Nettleford observed in writing on the region's cultural identity, our common heritage of slavery, imperial domination and struggle has made the Caribbean archipelago "one communal yard".
One 'Communal Yard'
St. Kitts and Nevis will be transformed into that "communal yard" next month when the cultural heritage of all the peoples who make up the melting pot that is the Caribbean - from the descendants of the indigenous Caribs and other tribes to the dominant Afro and Indo-West Indian ethnic streams give substance to the central theme of the seventh CARIFESTA: "Reflecting, Consolidating, Moving On".
Contingents of some 1,000 cultural performers in dance, song, music, art, poetry and drama, visual arts as well as participants in symposia and book fairs and special youth and children presentations are expected from about 30 countries in the region.
In explaining the "who", "why" and "what" of CARIFESTA 2000, the St. Kitts and Nevis Secretariat for the festival tells it in their own way in one of the brochures being distributed through the Community Secretariat: "We are the people of the Caribbean, and we come together because we are the same. Then we play, dance, act, cook, sing, dress, shape, read, show and tell for each other to celebrate our differences.
"But the Caribbean is no paradox. We are but brothers and sisters, children of one history, echoes of a single past sharing what we have learnt and invented, speaking to each other in voices we all understand beyond the boundaries of language, thought and ocean, boasting things at once amazing and familiar..."
At their recent 21st Summit in the Grenadine island of Canoun, the CARICOM Heads of Government had the opportunity to consider the latest arrangements for the hosting of CARIFESTA 2000 and the general impression conveyed was one of "satisfaction" accompanied by assurances that their respective Governments will honour their obligations to ensure the success of the festival.
Rickey Singh is a journalist based in Barbados.
