(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Drums, dance, pan and soca music, chorale singing, story telling and pottery making converged at the Grand Market in the National Exhibition Site Sophia to create an alluring exposition of the Caribbean culture as CARIFESTA X fever intensifies in Georgetown, Guyana.

The tenth Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) Grand Market got underway on Saturday August 23, 2008 with a warm start, but on Tuesday August 25 the atmosphere was electrifying. All booths were occupied and there were stellar country performances from the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, Brazil and Suriname; each personifying their cultural idiosyncrasies, but the common strain that reflected a unique Caribbean identity was evident.

Thousands of people including His Excellency Bharrat Jagdeo, President of Guyana surged through the Exhibition Complex for a taste of CARIFESTA X that was truly reminiscent of a ‘melting pot’ of all facets of the Caribbean way of life.

Among the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states exhibitors were The Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and two Associate Members Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands. A plethora of local art and craft exhibitors, an Indigenous Peoples Village as well as a Culinary Village added to the impressive spectacle of the CARIFESTA X Grand Market.

According to newly accredited Ambassador of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to CARICOM, His Excellency Ellsworth John, the country’s participation in the CARIFESTA was to highlight products made from the banana crop and other products of its manufacturing industry.

Ambassador John said that St. Vincent and the Grenadines also wanted to highlight its carnival culture, Vincy Mas, which he opined was second only to Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival. On display were replicas of some the exquisitely designed costumes that create the spectacular scene at the ‘Vincy Carnival’.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines reigning Soca Monarch, Princess Monique rocked the stage during its Country Night’s performance on Monday with many of her popular hits, most notably “Whose Laughing Now’. The song enunciates the haste to engage in agricultural activities such as cattle rearing and farming that were scorned before the world food crisis phenomenon. Shernelle ‘Scorpion’ Williams was another ‘hit’ from St. Vincent and the Grenadines at the Country Night performance.

Perhaps the most stirring of the Country Night performances came from Montserrat’s Emerald Community Singers who thrilled the audience with a repertoire of Montserrat and Caribbean folk songs. The Group articulated the islands experience with the Soufrière Hills Volcano in two songs; one entitled ‘Shovelling’ that related the travails of shovelling volcano ash off roof tops to prevent collapse, and another ‘One more river to cross’, which enunciates the resident’s unsettling experience of moving further and further inland to escape the effects of the volcano.

Country night performances continue at the Grand Market until August 30, 2008 with at least three cultural presentations each night.