carifesta fiasco

The Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (CARIFESTA) was originally launched by an appeal from regional artists who were at the time participating in a Writers and Artists Convention in Georgetown, Guyana in 1970 and also coincided with Guyana's Co-operative Republican Status.

However Culture is not POLITRICKS ...

The first Carifesta was staged in Guyana in 1972, it has since been staged on eight occasions across the region, in Barbados , St Kitts & Nevis, Suriname, Jamaica, Cuba and Trinidad & Tobago on two occasions (1992 & 1995)

The Theme for this year's staging in Trinidad & Tobago will be:

CELEBRATING OUR PEOPLE: CONTESTING THE WORLD STAGE .

But clearly according to rumbles reported in the press-this festival is in danger of being a POLITICAL FOOTBALL...

Further developments suggest that there are erroneous plans to have as a central focus: a command performance by American Rapper: fifty cents!!! Now what has that to do with indigenous Caribbean cultural artforms is anyone's guess...???

We have inherited a lively survivalist oral tradition in Ska, Rocksteady, home grown-Jazz, Reggae, Punta, Merengue, Samba, Salsa, Zouk, Soca, Ragga, Kaiso, Chutney, Robber Talk and RAPSO...

We have our own thinkers philosophers, poets, artists playwrights & writers...

Yet some promoter was " inspired" to advise the "powers that be" to foot the bill of having the leading face in that highly offensive movie "GET RICH AND DIE TRYING".

However to this moment-Only one famed local artist/poet was vocal in his opposition to this dim idea.

Do RE-member the outcry this movie invoked..consider the highly offensive foreign lyrics of gansta rap plus the links to gun crime!!!! Those affected communities do not manufacture that deadly hardware! There were such loud opposition by targeted audiences due to the orgy of violence and negative stereotypes projected... So why should this leading star be featured? Whose interest does this serve? The financers? The advertisers? the politicians? the audiences?

what a joke.... Not a funny one though...

If carifesta IX is to succeed careful planning and REorganisation should take place. There is no shame in a postponement! But surely embrassing, if it falls on its face! NO POLITICIAN should be allowed to railroad nor control this vibrant legacy! This should not be about ELECTIONS- at local or central government level!!!!

The crime rate (including GUN related) spirals out of hand across the region (ref. Amnesty International).. Political stability at risk... A smelter planned against the wishes of citizens ...

may the ancestors provide those with wisdom

to influence otherwise...