Carifesta: A reinvention which is not shaking up the world

Carifesta – the Caribbean Festival of the Arts is experiencing another revival.  The eleventh regional festival is currently being held in Suriname, having officially opened in Paramaribo last Friday evening and will run from August 16 to 25.  The Surinamese government is playing host to the rest of the Caribbean using a slightly different formula from the one used by host countries in the festivals immediately preceding this one. The minor differences are an issue and are quite relevant to the history of shifting fortunes, uncertainties and threats to survival that Carifesta has experienced throughout the 41 years of its existence.

The first point worth noting is that Carifesta XI is being held in 2013; it is five years since the last one, Carifesta X, was held in Guyana in 2008.  Since then, there have been two attempts to pull it off, including one planned for The Bahamas in 2010.  What is more, that was the second time in three years that the Nassau Government had offered to host the festival and then cancelled it.  They were the proposed hosts in 2007 and it was their announcement that they could no longer fulfil their promise that prompted Guyana to come to the rescue and take it over in 2008.  The Bahamas, eager to make amends, offered to take it up again in 2010, but once more failed to do so.

This first point then, is that the holding of Carifesta continues to be sporadic.  There has been no regularity in its time-table, and from year to year it is still never known if and when another country will volunteer to host it.  In the opening paragraph above we referred to “another revival.”  In the preceding paragraph we said Guyana “came to the rescue” in 2008.  These phrases are