Primary stakeholders are excited about prospects for Saint Lucia carnival growing bigger and better.
On Thursday, representatives from the key agencies, band leaders, artistes, service providers, and other mas enthusiasts gathered at Sandals Grande for the media launch of this year’s event.
The popular mid-summer festival will run from July 1 to 17.
According to the organizers, the responses from local and global patrons have been favorable, with an overflow of registration into the respective bands.
“Carnival in Saint Lucia is more than just Mas, more than just what happens on the road for a couple of days,” declared Minister of Tourism and Creative Industries Dr. Ernest Hilaire.
“It is part of our culture, it helps define who we are as a people,” he told the gathering.
“And therefore…it plays a very important part in unlocking and unleashing the creativity of our people, the musician, the artiste, the costume makers and persons taking part in the various pageants,” the minister added.
Hectic preparations have been ongoing for another carnival season, with revelers eager to participate.
Hilaire described the event as the “biggest festival” in the country.
He noted that the carnival is “a powerful economic agent in Saint Lucia.”
The minister recalled that the Island attracted more than 18,000 visitors last year for the festivity, with July recording the most stayover visitors for the year.
“It tells you about the importance that carnival has for our economic growth and our economic development. It brings in substantial income into this country,” said Hilaire.
He said many persons and entities benefit from carnival’s “economic impact”.
“And therefore, it is something that we need to protect,” he stressed.
He said it was necessary to ensure the continued to grow because more people were earning livelihoods from it.
“It continues to grow in every year, in every way,” declared Tamara Gibson, Chairperson of the Carnival Planning and Management Committee (CPMC).
“We’re arguably one of the best summer festivals in the region offering events catering to every age group, every preference and every budget,” she said.
While appealing for wider public participation in the festivity, Gibson said, “larger volumes of people (are) attending our national competitions and greater quality of experiences all around, including at the community level.”
She added, “We are building a sustainable carnival that defines us as Saint Lucian people and one that will last for generations to come.”
Only psuedo-transparency we have from this government is around carnival events. Forget your misery and party Lucians.
Meanwhile 3 years into a term, we cannot complete a hospital and have no idea on timelines almost 7 months after big fanfare over an approved loan.
What about water sustainability? I Thank a you.
Whats about a treat deserved wage for all workers ?
This is the sort of errors from gouvernements, leaders, rulers and officials…
Four months away yet tge big party to expose lawdness and licentiousness is launched by none other than the men and women that was chosen to represent us and lead us with integrity.
Whereas, no end in sight for completion of the Mellenium Highway or St. Jude’s Hospital, etc, etc.
Neither is 1 cent added to the Royal St.Lucia Police Force budget to purchase proper equipment to fight and combat crime both onland and at sea.
1 dog and it’s called a K9 unit? A unit can never be one!
A grand and model HRDC is built in Bexon, yet being described by one of the most uniformed parliamentarians ever elected as too grand for St. Lucia, yet millions are already budgeted for and will be wasted during carnival with no accountability.
At least the HRDC is there to see, what have we seen carnival built afterward?
Lucians, go ahead, eat your carnival, crush the bones of jazz, toast and drink to your fetes whilst Rome burns!
WHILE ALL THE COMMENTS ARE ON ,WE WOULD LIKE TO INVITE EVERYONE TO THE SCREENINGS OF OUR GOLD AWARD WINNING MOVIE ‘SHANTAYE’S WORLD’ AT CARIBBEAN CINEMA ON MAY 5,2024 AT 5;00PM. IT IS PART OF THE JAZZ AND ARTS EVENT .ONLY COST US15.00.
SEE YOU THERE IN STYLE AND FASHION .
Our GOD is good and sees everything !!
Why are we advertising an event in a comment section? Pay the page to do things properly. People put in their work and we just ride on their efforts. We need to get out of this mindset as a. people.
A little decadent history for the uninitiated and perhaps the religious prudes among us.
We in Saint Lucia would also class Carnival as a festive Bacchanal. The word Bacchanal is named after Greek god of festivities and wine drinking call Bacchus. Bacchanalia is a pagan festival where people generally let loose, drank wine and simply misbehave…of course like everything pagan it gets re-invented and sold to the public. Even Carnival has the prefix Carn in it referring to the flesh…as in carnal …. carnivore…a flesh eater….Easter is also a pagan festival that was appropriated by the Christian church and sold as an observance of the birth, death and resurrection of the fraud called jesus Christ….but actually the pagan celebration of Easter that was observed long before Christianity was born, actually observed the new season of Spring as flowers rose from the ground after the cold winter had symbolically killed them off….and so the pagans worshiped nature for bringing back to life the flowers and tress and animals coming out of hibernation from the winter season… those living in America, Canada and Europe where there are four seasons can literally see these changes in nature……as always Christianity/ religion steals practices from those they called pagans and repurposes the Easter idea for its own insidious means….
Now bring on the Bacchanal and fête, tight leotards and grinding crotches, twerking and pulsing derrieres to pulsating music, juggling and heaving pitons wrapped and spilling out of miniscule braziers, colourful bird feathers, G strings and sweaty bodies and let’s have a blast …ONE LIFE TO LIVE, LIVE IT RIGHT.
Slight correction : Bacchus is the Roman good of wine and merry making…his equivalent is the Greek god called Dionysus…
To all the locals who believe they must be in everything (yoo en tot sauce saa yoo kee cell) do yourself a favor ..take care of your home, your phone, your food, your kids. — may sure they have all they need for school before you sign up to be with the Jones’s and the bumbum wall bayteeze.
More importantly, stop begging your family and friends who work hard in snow, rain and all kinds of weather for 💰💰💰 find a job to support yourself and your carnival and jazz festivities…malvetaayes.
c–wiz if u wana always criticize christians and call them shaking dem grASS and sweaty bodies and S-M-W strings whatever letter of the alphabet i want, if u call these things people do as “living right” yet these same people dont have money to feed their kids and having people like me and others spending all kind of money to send THEIR children to school, buy them a tin tuna fish, whatever they desire when they see people, if bacchanal is what u call one life to live then c-wiz i eh know who u does want to impress with all your long paragraphs…..choops….(with white bread in between my teeth tun…..)
Judas regret of betraying Jesus,then went and hang himself, while others were mocking and made fun of him…
John the Baptiste Prepares the way
It is written in Isaiah the prophet :
“I will send my Messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way”_
“a voice of one calling in the desert,
‘Prepare the way for the LORD,
make straight paths for him ‘ ”
He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you..
But those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,
“they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding ; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven !’ ”
Whoever blasphèmes against the Holy Sprit will never be forgiven,is guilty and condemned as to tie a stone around the neck and be drowned ❗
@ not impressed…next narrative please…
Ordinarily I would not respond to rants such as yours but today, I will make an exception.
First, be informed that I reserve the right to criticise any institution under the sun because when I last checked, we live in a democratic country and freedom of speech is a tenet enshrined in democratic principles..
Secondly, adults have a right to enjoy themselves within the boundaries of the law which allows them and so. If it’s ok at carnival to show a little skin and have a good time and no one is breaking the law, then all is game. If such a sight at carnival offends your prudish eyes, perhaps you should lock yourself in a church on carnival day to avoid offending your sky god and while doing so prostrate your derriere at a 45 degree angle to the sun asking your sky god for forgiveness…
Thirdly, you must be the biggest fool to spend your money on people’s children to send them to school and to come on here to complain about it….even more hypocritical of you is the fact that you appear or pretend to be a Christian, against some skin showing and derrieres twerking during carnival, yet you fail to see that if you spend money to send people’s children to school atleast you would be doing Christian charity which your sky god encouraged you to do….but by complaining you have shown to be a complete and utter hypocrite….you have no principle and your religious self righteousness is pure hypocrisy…. typical of Christians…your words betray you and it’s quite glaring.
Fourthly, impress? I seek to impress no-one but I will tell you this: I write freely on this forum. It’s an open platform for all….He who don’t like it….à la Juke Bois : TOOF!!!!
@ C-WIZ
To exploit that freedom given to us, namely…….the freedom of speech, of the Press etc under a so called Democracy, so as to use this to blaspheme the name of our Savior, referring to Him as the sky god and you have been doing this, offending a great number of us making a mockery of that which we believe in.
C-WIX we are not against anyone writing their thoughts on here, but to write in a way knowing very well that that which they write does offend the sensibility of many, not withstanding that of our Christ. There’s usually a very heavy price paid by them who mock our Creator, I don’t wish bad on anyone but my fervent wish is that all will humble oneself and come to Christ in repentance, giving up the things of this earth, the carnality, the rejoicing in the pleasures of the Gods of this world, the drunkenness, filthy dancing etc. C-WIZ our God is not a sky God, He is the Creator of all things, the planets, the peoples of this Earth; in humility and in love I urge you, come to Christ for the time is short – none of us know the day or the time – come son, come to Christe.
@ The fox…
It appears the cotton babies came out to cry. Why is it Christians get so offended when someone critically comments on their religious beliefs? I don’t so much get offended when people criticise my own unbelief in the sky god? In fact…I relish it because then we can have a civil conversation while exchanging ideas. This sycophantic idea that god cannot be questioned or ridiculed is purely absurd. It’s time to wake up to the real world and smell the coffee..
Now to say that you don’t wish bad on me is a red herring which actually seems to suggest that you actually wish harm on me….well join the queue of a long line of ill wishers… Reason will always tramp superstition. The last time I look, Christianity is on a decline because people are now waking up to this ridiculous idea that some pie in the sky god is looking down reeking love or vengeance on earth. I can tell you are very invested in your beliefs and it’s your right .. but you cannot dictate to me that I cannot criticise the ridiculousness of such infantile beliefs….I have conversed with many so called religious fundamentalists and they have yet to convince me of their reasons for the beliefs yet, they all leave by the end of our conversation with doubts about the existence of a sky god because I present facts that are verifiable…and hard, irrefutable, undeniable, unfalsifiable facts…you should wake up from your illusion ( and I say so with respect) that some invisible entity is watching over us….the ancient Egyptians had their gods but we no longer believe in them, so did the ancient Greeks had their gods but we no longer believe in then either…and so did other ancient civilisations…..if you lived in those ancient times, you probably would have believed in those gods too….but here you are today believing in another god….created but illiterate sheep and goat herding tribesmen of ancient times…
As for your warning of ill befalling me…I live in pure harmony with life, without fear or worry…if god is so great like you would claim, he should atleast be able to take a few jibes from a mere mortal like me …shows how pathetic he really is…. doesn’t it?