Cultural Heritage
Our annual Festival celebrations are in full swing and during the next few days we will witness or take part in a series of activities including, the Miss BVI pageant, the August Monday grand parade, and horse races. Indeed this is a time to be merry and enjoy our most important holiday. It is also a time to look back and remember those BVI pioneers who have contributed in so many ways to make our celebrations more significant.
The coordinator of the 1953 Coronation celebrations in the BVI was Dr. Norwell E. Harrigan who in 1993 became one the first two black natives honoured on stamps. The 1953 festivities formed the basis for the modern BVI Festival which continues the tradition started in 1834 with the Emancipation Proclamation celebrations. On August 1st, 1834 some 5,133 slaves were freed in the British Virgin Islands. In 1954 the BVI Festival saw the added attraction of horse races at Sea Cows Bay, and in 1957 the villages of East End-Long Look began organising their own celebrations on August Wednesday.
Steel pan music has been making a big come-back in the BVI during the last 10-15 years thanks to the 'steely' determination of Leslie deCastro. His Music in Steel Association has been quite successful in reviving both steel band and fungi & scratch bands. Fungi music is one of the last links to African culture in the BVI - it is an exclusively unique type of BVI music. A melodious and infectious potpourri of string percussion and wind describe fungi quite accurately. Fungi music is at the very root of festival celebrations, in fact fungi rhythms were performed by villagers since the mid-1700s at harvest time and during the Christmas holidays. The post-emancipation August festivities gave this type of music even greater prominence; it was, however, a colloquial type of entertaining.
All too often we look at Festival as a fun-time and nothing more. Our cultural heritage, however, should have greater prominence and we hope that this crucial aspect will receive more attention this year and in the years to come.