NEVIS CULTURAMA FESTIVAL

‘The Caribbean’s Greatest Summer Lime’

String Bands, Big Drum Bands, Steel Bands, Masquerades, Clowns, Cake Walk, Quadrille, Moko Jumbies, Folklore in Galore!  A potpourri of colorful costumes, indigenous music, oral traditions, intricate dance movements, street and stage theatre, traditional cuisine, traversing the cultural landscape of ‘Queen City’, Nevis, known to the Carib people as Oualie.

This is how Nevis’ premier cultural festival – Culturama – was conceived and designed in 1974 by the Nevis Dramatic and Cultural Society (NEDACS).

Culturama was born out of a dire need to preserve and promote the island’s rich cultural traditions, many of which were threatened with extinction following the mass migration of its best practitioners to North America, Europe and the Virgin Islands since the 1950s.

It was also part of a new cultural renaissance overtaking the Caribbean at the time, which had seen the rise of the Black Power Movement and the birth of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Nevisians at home and abroad are proud of this unique cultural festival and are always quick to demonstrate, through words and deeds, the distinction between Nevis Culturama and the carnival celebrations in other Caribbean destinations. 

Throughout the life of the festival, a concerted effort has been made by the government, organizers and people to ensure that the integrity of the festival is not compromised.  Queen pageants, kaiso contests, freedom concerts and other contemporary shows have been specifically designed and appropriately fused into the program in keeping with the goals and objectives of the festival.

Programs aimed at the preservation and revival of the island’s traditional forms have been implemented in the schools and communities of Nevis.  These programs, quite naturally, culminate annually with the staging of Culturama on the Emancipation Day weekend in late July/early August.

It has now become the norm for Kittitians, returning nationals and visitors from the Caribbean, North America and Europe to flock to the shores of Nevis in droves for the 12-day Culturama festival experience.

This year 2014 we will celebrate 40 years of Nevis’ Culturama, which is undoubtedly the Caribbean’s Greatest Summer Lime and we will also celebrate Nevis’ first ever Home Coming Celebration when we will extend an invitation to Nevisians within the Diaspora to come home and be reunited with friends and family.

Check out our website at http://www.culturamanevis.com/ and our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/NevisCulturamaFestival