Masquerade is an appropriate form for Carifesta

By Al Creighton

Carifesta X has been launched in Georgetown.  The tenth Caribbean Festival of Arts is to be held in Guyana August 22–31, 2008, and the first official public event to promote it at home and among the participating Caribbean territories was staged on the square outside the Bank of Guyana building on Thursday April 24. 

Now that the festival has been publicly launched, it might be useful to open an occasional window into some of the artistic concepts, performance traditions and art forms that are parts of the Carifesta plan and that are expected to appear in the festival.  Since the event is returning to its place of origin, one of the main ideas is to engineer a rebirth, returning it to its high place as the major festival of the arts in the region.  It is to become a forum at which the best, the most representative, and the new directions in the various forms and disciplines as practised in the different territories are showcased.