There was usually nothing to signal when the events of one day ended and those of the other began as the activities of Carifesta VIII blended without fuss into the popular night life of Paramaribo, Suriname. It was already past midnight on Thursday when a group of traditional Surinamese dancers accompanied by drummers brought their performance to a close on one of the two stages set up in the Palm Gardens known as Palmentuin. Just 100 metres away on the other Palmentuin stage, a Jamaican reggae band was blasting through the night, setting thousands of revellers alight until deep into Friday morning.

The organizers of Carifesta obviously wanted to draw the local communities into the festival and to expose them to the performances of the visiting delegations. This desire was built in to the various district and community visits as well as the arrangements within Palmentuin itself. But the way this quarter of the city immediately became its busiest fun park and ‘liming’ spot could not have worked better if they had deliberately planned it.

Palmentuin, a large park filled with tall palm trees in the city centre, was made up to look like an Amerindian village. Several huts were set up to make it a home away from home for the people of Carib, Wayana, Arawak, Trio and other indigenous peoples from both Suriname and other countries. They could be seen making traditional food items, art and crafts which were displayed and sold in the many stalls and huts.

But the dominant activities there were mainly entertainment on the two stages and the sale of food and drinks as well as the art and crafts. Guyana’s Amerindian dancers were there Tuesday performing their Mari Mari dance.

The ‘village’ captured the imagination of the local population in a very big way and, if only for the week of Carifesta, became a lively part of popular culture. When asked ‘have you been to any of the Carifesta activities?’ a common response from Paramaribo’s working population was ‘I’ve been to Palmentuin.’

Thursday night’s late-night entertainment was provided by C-Sharp, a reggae band made up of current and graduate students of the School of Music in the Edna Manley Centre for the Performing Arts in Jamaica.

They were a part of Jamaica’s delegation and their presence demonstrated a recent trend in Carifesta delegations. Many countries, notably Jamaica and Trinidad, were not represented by their best or leading artists for whom Carifesta no longer seems to be the most important regional artistic activity.

But C-Sharp commanded the stage and their large, energized audience with a stirring stage show. They were followed on the same stage the following night by The Masters Band, a popular group from St Kitts who, after a tame start, succeeded in stirring up the crowd. They engaged the Surinamese in the Byron Lee style dancing (or rather ‘wining’) competitions among members of the audience.

The second biggest crowd puller at Carifesta was the Grand Market set up at a venue on the outskirts of the city. It attracted a constant traffic of thousands through the day and there was a non-stop series of variety performances on its ‘Main Stage.’ Thursday evening’s entertainment there included Suriname’s Wajano Amerindian group and a Kriesh Ramkhelawan performance, Indonesian music and a St Vincent calypso show.

Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica were the main features there Friday night. Back in the city centre, the theatre production from St Lucia had a very well-received two-night run in the theatre at Ons Erf, where Barbados and Guyana also performed.

This is one of the main venues for theatre in Paramaribo, but because of its very conventional platform stage, all these productions had to reshape the performance area to make it fit their presentations.

The St Lucian performance was mainly driven by music but it also included dance and dramatizations. It took the audience on a journey through a number of the performance traditions of the island including carnival, the bele (bel air) dance and the La Rose festival.

Although the drums dominated, there was a quite impressive steel pan demonstration. A strength of this presentation was its colour, as there was careful attention to costuming, and in this area, the La Rose is not only musical but spectacular. St Lucia, followed by Barbados’ Praise Song for Bruce, was the leading theatrical piece for Carifesta’s mid-week evenings.

Despite those, neither theatre nor literature were particularly outstanding in Carifesta VIII. Full-length plays were especially avoided by the visiting delegations and the overwhelming majority of leading writers of the Caribbean were absent. However, as if to establish some sort of a presence, there was an ongoing display of the work of the late Surinamese poet Robin Dobru who was prominent at the early Carifestas.

There was also a series of readings by some of those writers who were there. Barbadians Dana Gilkes, Cynthia Wilson and Winston Farrell read from their writings at the Theatre Unique.

Two of St Lucia’s leading poets, Kendel Hipolyte, who was also a playwright and director, and Robert Lee, also read at the Unique, which is, artistically, the most interesting theatre in the city.

The Carifesta Symposium on Arts and Culture concluded on Friday at the Torarica Hotel. A very important session was the one examining a more effective structure for Carifesta and the future survival of the festival. Under the title ‘Reinventing Carifesta,’ papers were presented by Keith Nurse and Al Creighton.

Hipolyte and Guyanese Henry Muttoo, who has worked as a theatre designer in Jamaica and Cayman, presented on the future of the arts in the Caribbean. Cuban Nilson Acosta discussed the arts and tourism while Monique Nouh Chaia and Boike Tojo dealt with marketing the arts.

Guyana Ting-A-Merry performed on Friday night to a full house, which included a large contingent of resident and visiting Guyanese.

In fact, so Guyanese was the occasion that hardly had the performance got under way before it was struck by a sudden black-out that lasted a whole half-hour.