Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The music of Antigua and Barbuda is largely African in character, and has only felt a limited influence from European styles due to the population of Antigua and Barbuda descending mostly from West Africans who were made slaves by Europeans. [1] Antigua and Barbuda is a Caribbean nation in the Lesser Antilles island chain.
The upper class looked on steel-pan players with disdain until Dr. Eric Williams, leader of People's National Movement and the man known as father of the nation, increased the acceptance of steel-pan in the mainstream music scene by encouraging corporations to sponsor steel bands, giving the bands more respectability in society. [12]
As well as the main stage there is an African market with over a hundred stands, caterers with mostly African snacks and a side program of dance and music. [3] In 2013, 2014 and 2015 the magazine Songlines voted the Africa Festival one of the 25 best festivals in Europe.
The festival is also where calypso music has its roots. It was originally a harvest festival, at which drums, singing, dancing and chanting were an integral part. After Emancipation (1834), it developed into an outlet and a festival for former indentured laborers and freed slaves who were banned from participating in the masquerade carnival ...
Music is provided by an ensemble of triangle, fife and two goatskin, deep-barreled drums called kettles or booms). This tradition is primarily African in style, with little Irish or British influence, and is very distinct from jumbie dance styles. The traditional music of the December Festival was last performed in 1988, in St. John's Village. [5]
Calypso, with its satirical and socio-political lyrics, was developed in the 18th century as a fusion of African and French music styles. It eventually accompanied the rise of steelpan music. Steelpan were imported to Saint Vincent quickly. Calypso's political lyrics have continued to be an important part of the genre.
The inspiration for convening FESTAC can be traced to the development of ideas on Négritude and Pan-Africanism.In the 1940s, Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, inspired by the Pan-Africanism of W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke's concept of the New Negro, started a journal and publishing house in Paris, France, called Présence Africaine; both Césaire and Senghor were also members of ...
The festival period saw a variety of different events encompassing dance, music, drama, sculpture, and painting, and events were hosted both in national theatres and halls and on the street. [4] Notable performances over the 12-day event included concerts by Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone , as well as a much-lauded improvisatory jazz ...