2014 is an exceptional year of cultural events in Anguilla in that there will be forty days of carnival or summer festival activities on the island, compared with ten to fifteen days in previous years.
This all has to do with celebrations marking forty years since Anguilla embarked on a series of carnival activities. From its formative years, to the present time, carnival has evolved into an elaborate festival of music, song, dance, calypso, troupe parades and a variety of shows. It has also become a tourism marketing tool for Anguilla in the lean summer time when tourist arrivals are generally on the decline.
The Anguilla Summer Festival, which embodies the carnival events and boat-racing, was launched on Wednesday this week, July 2, with a radio broadcast by Minister of Home Affairs, Jerome Roberts. The festival will continue until August 10. The Carnival Committee, in collaboration with Radio Anguilla, used the opportunity of a live road show outside the Landsome Bowl Cultural Centre, to tell the public about the soft launch and the details of the summer festival.
Mr Karl Woodley, Acting Chairman of the Committee, spoke to The Anguillian. “This year we are celebrating forty years of summer festival in Anguilla, and what we decided as a committee was to create that buzz giving us forty days of summer festival – hence our soft launch today. Our grand opening is on July 31, but at the moment we just wanted to have a soft launch to tie into the whole forty idea so we have started today.”
Mr Woodley was asked whether there would be any ‘dead air’ in cultural activities between now and the official opening date. “No. You will shortly hear what we have on the programme; and what we have just done is to introduce to the general public our Grand Marshall for 2014, Dr Linda Banks. She has been involved with carnival in Anguilla for over the years, and we have decided this year to start to pay special tribute to persons who have given their time to the summer festival – and we are going to start with her. You will see a grand parade in her honour and in which she will be the leader.”
Commenting on that matter, Dr Banks recalled that from a child she was exposed to the revelry and pageantry of carnival on the grounds of the then Valley Secondary School. “It was not by accident that The Valley Secondary School, as the largest hall in Anguilla, at that time, was also the venue for my reluctant entry into the world of pageantry,” she stated. “I was then one of the contestants of the now historic Statehood Queen Show that launched the Anguilla Revolution.”
Dr Banks gave a detailed account of her involvement in carnival and the Anguilla Summer Festival over the years. She noted that her “commitment to our cultural heritage, and to maintaining the real significance of the Emancipation Day/August Monday celebrations, led me to host a queen pageant called Africa Revisited for four years.” That was only one of a number of cultural activities in which she was involved.
“Today, I continue to be involved in carnival by facilitating workshops and motivational sessions for contestants of various shows, and serving as a judge for some shows,” she added. “I am also proud to be a member of the Classique Ole Timers Carnival Troupe which embraces cultural themes in its costumes, and demonstrates that carnival participation is not limited by age or circumstance.”
Meanwhile, Mr Woodley said the Carnival Committee hoped that the various shows would be well supported by the public. “We just want to encourage everybody to come on out and support carnival and be a part of it. We, from the Carnival and Summer Festival Committee, wish everyone a safe and happy carnival,” he concluded.
